Home Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: Countering extremism, HC 428
Tuesday 1 December 2015
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 1 December 2015
Members present: Keith Vaz (Chair); Victoria Atkins, James Berry, Mr Ranil Jayawardena, Tim Loughton, Naz Shah, Mr Chuka Umunna, Mr David Winnick.
Questions 502 - 722
Witness: Sir Charles Montgomery, Director General, Border Force, gave evidence.
Q502 Chair: Could I call the Committee to order and refer everyone present to the Register of Members’ Interests where the interests of the members of this Committee have been noted? Are there any further interests to be declared?
James Berry: Professor Weinberg is Vice-Chancellor of my local university in Kingston.
Chair: Thank you, Mr Berry. Sir Charles, thank you very much for coming in. This is part of our ongoing inquiry into counter-terrorism and the counter-narrative. We want to look today, especially after the events in Paris, at the Border Force and the work that it is doing to protect the borders of this country. Would you say that the borders of the United Kingdom are secure?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Chair, I have been before you on a number of occasions when I have advised you that there is no such thing as an impermeable border. What I have said before, and I will reiterate, is that the United Kingdom border is among the strongest of all the liberal democracies of the free world. I would even say that totalitarian states would never declare their borders utterly impermeable. What I would say is that our border is among the most secure in the world. We have natural advantages. We have a very tight operating mandate and I believe the regime we operate is proportionate to the risks and the threats that we face. Of course, those have increased and so too has our posture.
Q503 Chair: You kept the promise that you made to this Committee that you would have 100% exit checks by 1 April.
Sir Charles Montgomery: You will recall that both myself and the Minister gave evidence to the former Committee at the back end of the last Parliament, I think it was, in which we made clear that the regime was 100%, with some well-publicised exceptions. Those surround the common travel area, elements of general maritime and, as you will recall, elements of coach traffic where we conduct discreet checks on those passengers who we consider to be proportionate. Those checks have been increased as a result of Paris.
Q504 Chair: What else have you done as a result of what has happened in Paris?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Could I start by saying that we had already raised our posture since the threat level was raised to severe some while ago and we have been in that posture now for about 18 months or so. That means that we have been doing a lot more targeting of both freight and people coming across the border. We have invested a lot in the capacity of the targeting centre and its particular technologies. Exit checks are a component part of this, as too are the at-gate outbound and inbound checks we do on selected and targeted flights, and members of the Committee may well have been on some of those flights where you will meet my people at the border.
Q505 Chair: But that was all happening prior to Paris?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes. Since it went to severe, we have been doing some profiling on arrival and making very significant numbers of referrals on a weekly basis to counter-terrorism police for them to take forward. That was the posture even before Paris. I wanted to set that out because Paris builds on that. Since Paris, within half an hour of the news of the attacks, we had instituted increased checking of both freight and passengers on selected routes inbound to the United Kingdom and, on request, very shortly thereafter on outbound routes from the United Kingdom. We have done CTA checks, we have redeployed our cutters to higher risk routes, and we have operated with the Royal Navy, embarking our people in Royal Navy ships to do likewise. I offer you a range there to give you a flavour of what we have done.
Q506 Chair: That is very helpful, but does that include better checks on those coming from Dunkirk or the Hook of Holland? The concern that we had was that although Calais seems to be secure, if you look at a country like Holland they have only two sniffer dogs available for immigration purposes in the whole country. The worry is that in the containers that go to Harwich there are weapons that could be used by those who seek to cause an attack against the British people.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Chair, for reasons you will understand, I do not want to go to specific routes, specific times and specific modes. What I can say, as you would expect, is that we are working very closely with our close European colleagues. I am advised and guided by the work of the special intelligence agencies and the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, among others, and we are targeting our effort on those routes that they judge to be of the highest risk.
Q507 Chair: Did you see last week’s evidence session with the Security Minister and this Committee?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I read the transcript.
Chair: You did? So you know that I raised the case of Trevor Brooks and Simon Keeler, two individuals who are subject to a Home Office travel ban and who were both on extremism watch lists. They managed to leave the country and get all the way to the Hungarian-Romanian border before Romanian police apprehended them. How is it possible, considering that we have 100% checks, we have watch lists, we have travel bans, that they are able to get through the Border Force and make their way all the way to Hungary and Romania?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Those two individuals have been arrested, of course, and I am not going to talk about them specifically.
Chair: Yes, but not by you.
Sir Charles Montgomery: No, they were not by me, but because they are under that process, I cannot talk specifically about that case. What I can say, Chair—
Q508 Chair: Do you mean there are other cases of people who have managed to get out who are subject to travel bans?
Sir Charles Montgomery: No, I didn’t say that either, Chair. I simply said that I am not able to talk about those two individuals.
Q509 Chair: Well, use that as an example and tell us the policy. How is it possible for someone with a Home Office travel ban to leave the United Kingdom, go all the way across Europe and end up on the borders between Hungary and Romania, and Romanian police, rather than the elite force that you are supposed to lead, being able to apprehend them?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I go back to my answer to the first question: there is no such thing as an impermeable border.
Q510 Chair: But if you have a watch list and you have a travel ban, surely that must be looked at before people leave the country if you have 100% exit checks, otherwise what is the point? These are not people who come within the exemptions; they are not schoolchildren on a trip to Calais. These are grown-up men with a big history of involvement in terrorism.
Sir Charles Montgomery: You will know, Chair, that our maritime coast is 11,000 miles long. We are about 20 minutes by rigid inflatable from the nearest point of the Continent. It simply is not possible, as I have said before, to guarantee 100% lack of permeability at the border. It simply is not. I would point out, without referring to these individuals’ cases in particular, that of course those controls were tightened after Paris.
Q511 Chair: But are you now going to have an inquiry into how this happened? I would be very upset if I was in your position and I found out that people were leaving the country even though they were subject to Home Office travel bans.
Sir Charles Montgomery: They are in the judicial system of the country concerned at the moment. We will be waiting for that process to conclude before we conduct our investigations.
Q512 Chair: If you saw the transcript, you would have seen the evidence of the Greek Ambassador who told this Committee that he does not have the equipment to be able to ascertain whether or not a passport is a fake Syrian passport. Therefore, there is a possibility that the 400 or so people who are returning to this country, having fought in Syria, are getting through the Greek border, as happened in the case of Mr Abaaoud who then led the Paris attacks, and eventually ending up back in the United Kingdom.
Sir Charles Montgomery: That is where I come back to my point that our controls at the border inbound are among the tightest in the world. We have an extremely comprehensive suite of watch listing checks we do on people coming across our border, including on the basis of advance passenger information.
Q513 Chair: But that is if they fly here. In Mr Abaaoud’s case he crossed the border into Greece from Turkey on a false passport. Are you saying that in a similar circumstance where a British citizen is returning and has a false passport you would have been able to stop that happening? It is happening at the Greek border. They don’t have the equipment; it is not us.
Sir Charles Montgomery: No, in which case if they were arriving by air or travelling by air they would have to go through the checks to get on to the aircraft in the first place. Again, as you will recall, advance passenger information is one of the outer layers of our checks. We still do 100% checks on arrival in the United Kingdom.
Q514 Chair: But what can we do to help the Greeks, because they have the problem? It is the Greek border that is allowing people to come in and they cannot cope, can they? Even the new hotspots do not give them the opportunity to check people when they come back.
Sir Charles Montgomery: We are not a member of the Frontex organisation but we are contributing our expertise to Frontex in both Greece and Italy in the hotspots and to the Greeks themselves. We have an officer in the co-ordination centre for Frontex in Greece as well. We are providing expertise to the Greeks to help them handle the significant challenges they face.
Q515 Mr Umunna: As the Chair said, we took evidence last week from the Security Minister and his Cabinet Office lead and he said that there were around 800 UK nationals who had gone over to Syria to fight with ISIL. He said around 50 to 70 had been killed in action and half had returned. I think he settled on just over 300 as having returned. Are those numbers that you recognise?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I do, making it very clear that the higher number with which you started is an estimate, not a precise figure.
Q516 Mr Umunna: For the benefit of the record, could you explain what are the specific checks you carry out to detect people who are travelling with the intention to get to Syria or Iraq to fight with ISIL? What are you looking for? What are the common characteristics or things that cause alarm bells to go in your officers’ heads as they are going through the border?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Let me give you something of the mechanics. For reasons you will understand, I am not going to go into the characteristics that we are looking for.
Q517 Mr Umunna: Just for clarification, I am not necessarily talking about their background. I am talking about where they are going, practical things.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes, but that is precisely the information that I am not able to give you because those profiles are constantly being reworked and are the means by which we identify many of the unknowns. Can I elaborate a bit more?
Mr Umunna: Please.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Our first contribution to this effort on known targets of interest will be to look at advance information of travel and to wash it against those subjects of interest to determine if we know somebody of interest to another agency is travelling. That would be our first area of interest here. The second thing we do, even before any travel has been conducted, is to look at travel patterns of people who are conducting certain behaviours or who are travelling in certain ways. The first is about targeting known individuals; the second is about targeting unknowns but people who are behaving in ways that are suspicious to the authorities.
Q518 Mr Umunna: Sorry to cut in. In respect of both of those categories, in a given month, approximately how many individuals, in the known and the unknown categories, are you doing that deeper delve for information as to what they are going on to do?
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is in the hundreds.
Q519 Mr Umunna: You are checking hundreds of people every month?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Correct. We do many more than that, but for the purposes to which you are referring we do hundreds a month.
Q520 Mr Umunna: By all means complete the answer to my first question using my second question too, because I am sure there will be an overlap. I have asked you about the numbers and the kind of checks and the process you follow in respect of people going out. In respect of people coming in, could you also answer the same question? I understand you cannot give us the profile but in terms of the process, how many people are you checking, doing the deeper delve check as opposed to people just going through, in respect of people coming back? What are we talking numbers-wise a month?
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is the same scale of numbers. Can I just go back to the outbound checks, first of all, because I had not quite finished the answer? All I said was that the first stage is what we do even before somebody has tried to travel. The second stage is at the moment of travel when we or another agency might choose to intervene at the check-in or, alternatively, we do conduct profiling and screening on targeted flights on routes that we have been prompted to look at even after check-in. There is a range of things that my organisation does in concert with other organisations on the outbound journey. I hope that gives you a fair flavour of the layered approach we take before travel, before check-in, and even after check-in but before boarding the aircraft. That would be the outbound answer to your question.
Inbound is very similar. We do the same degree of analysis before travel. We mount similar controls on routes that we know are risky, and those are not necessarily the direct routes. We do that again with our colleagues from counter-terrorism police or other agencies, but we do it in the main with counter-terrorism police.
Q521 Mr Umunna: When they come back, obviously you are not a prosecuting authority, strictly speaking, and although you may believe somebody has been in that region, I am presuming you will not in some cases have evidence that they have been committing wrongdoing. Once you have detected that they may have come back from that region, what on earth do you then do with them if you have no reason to apprehend them?
Sir Charles Montgomery: As you rightly say, I am not an investigative or prosecuting unit on immigration offences or immigration cases such as those, but I did say that we operate very closely alongside counter-terrorism police. We will refer those individuals for further questioning by counter-terrorism police, which may be a very straightforward one-minute discussion or it may go somewhat deeper. I should also say that on the inbound journey my officers at the desks do a fair amount of their own personal questioning and profiling, and on a weekly basis we have been on average referring over 100 people from that process also to counter-terrorism.
Mr Umunna: Every week you are referring over 100 people to the—
Sir Charles Montgomery: From the process of referrals from the desk to the counter-terrorism police and, again, let me make it clear that the vast majority of those are not of interest to counter-terrorism police—the vast majority. A percentage get taken forward for further investigation.
Q522 Mr Umunna: Commonly, what are the ways that people use to get round you and your people, to avoid being detected at the border? What are, say, the top three or four ways in which people try to get round you detecting them?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I do not want to go into what my assessment of that is, for self-evident reasons. Needless to say, look, the controls at our points of entry are among the most rigorous in the world. It follows, therefore, that the areas that I would regard as being the highest risk are those for which we have no obvious point of entry control.
Q523 Chair: Thank you very much. Just to clarify, how many people did you refer to the counter-terrorism police last year?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I can come back to you with that when I have the figures from the counter-terrorism police.
Chair: Would you write to us?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes, indeed.
Q524 Mr Jayawardena: Sir Charles, the Immigration Minister recently signed a joint agreement with his counterparts in Belgium and the Netherlands to enhance co-operation and share expertise, particularly around organised criminal activity at the border. What kind of relationship do you have, at an operational level, with your Dutch and Belgium counterparts?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Absolutely first class. I have been out to both countries twice this year. That is personally. My teams have been out there quite regularly during the course of the summer taking forward the Minister’s initiatives at the ministerial level. Of course the collaboration does not just confine itself to organised immigration crime, although that was a key theme of the moment. The collaboration extends to joint action, so we will co-ordinate action on both sides of the North Sea or the Channel at times when we wish to, when we want to—
Q525 Mr Jayawardena: On that point, you are clearly satisfied with the co-operation you are getting from your border security counterparts. Would you also elaborate whether that includes police and intelligence agencies over the Channel?
Sir Charles Montgomery: In the Belgium of course it is the police. It is an arm of the police that I am dealing with. In the Netherlands not quite so, but my relationships with the police in those countries on these matters are dealt with by the really excellent relationship we have through the National Crime Agency secondees into the embassies in those two countries. We have links in through both the HMRC and NCA individuals we have in the embassies, and we have a very good direct link with the officials of both customs and immigration in those two countries.
Q526 Mr Jayawardena: What benefit would you and your staff derive from the Government’s proposals to implement Prüm and in doing so facilitate multilateral sharing of DNA, fingerprint and vehicle registration information?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Second order, really. What it would give me, via those agents who have a primary interest, is a richer target list of individuals and perhaps routes that my officers would need to focus on, so I would not be necessarily a direct recipient of the information from Prüm. I would be an indirect recipient of information that other agencies wanted me to take action on.
Q527 Mr Jayawardena: What can we do to encourage border officials and other EU nations to check the passports of those entering their countries against watch lists for wanted people, as Britain does?
Sir Charles Montgomery: We already have; the United Kingdom, the Government already has. The European Council have directed that there should be now systemised checks of all people coming across the external Schengen border.
Q528 Mr Jayawardena: Is that happening?
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is starting to happen.
Mr Jayawardena: It is not happening yet?
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is not happening, no, no, it is still—
Q529 Mr Jayawardena: What more can we do to make sure it does?
Sir Charles Montgomery: We are continuing to keep pressure on the process to make sure it does, but the fact that these controls are being done at the external Schengen border is in itself, of course, both absolutely vital and the fact that it is starting to happen is very welcome. We are putting pressure on the European Union institutions. We are already getting more data on key commodities, like firearms, from European Union countries as well. There is a range of things already underway within the European Union, and much of it is being pushed by the United Kingdom.
Q530 Mr Jayawardena: Essentially, what you are saying at the moment is that the European Union nations that are part of the Schengen area are not following their own rules as they are at the moment?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am not exactly sure of the timescale that was given for the implementation. It has started and that is the first and most important step. Likewise—and just picking up a point I think the Chair made earlier on, of course—another area where we are really pressing, and indeed making a practical contribution, is to the institution of hotspots in both Italy and in Greece.
Q531 Chair: You are glad that the Government has now joined Prüm?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Of course the Government hasn’t joined Prüm yet.
Chair: It has indicated it will join Prüm, you are glad about that?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Naturally, as a securocrat, I am delighted to have yet more information that enables me to take more action to ensure the security and stability of our country.
Q532 Chair: You would have liked them to have joined when they had the chance to a year ago?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Chair, I don’t fall into traps like that.
Q533 Chair: What about the I-Checkit programme, are you fully engaged with the Interpol I-Checkit programme?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I beg your pardon. We are fully engaged with Interpol. I think we are one of the most active contributions to the data that Interpol give us; I am just not recognising the programme you just referred to. You will recall that I gave evidence to the Committee before about the amount of information we are taking from Interpol in terms of lost and stolen passports and on movements across the border. We have the ability automatically to use Interpol data to take interventions.
Q534 Chair: On the question of profiling individuals, I have raised with you the case of Ayan Mohamud, an 18 year-old American citizen, who was detained by your officers for 13 hours, and she told the BBC that she felt she was detained because, “I’m a Muslim” and she believes that the reason why she was stopped was because she was wearing a headscarf. Thirteen hours for an 18 year-old girl sounds like an awful long time, considering she was just coming to a wedding.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Thank you, Chair, and thank you also for giving me forewarning you would raise this issue with me, but I had already initiated an investigation into this case. I am absolutely satisfied there is nothing either of an ethnic or racist dimension to this intervention, absolutely satisfied that that is not the case.
Q535 Chair: So you do not routinely stop women who come in with headscarves?
Sir Charles Montgomery: We do not routinely stop them, no. What we do of course is take targeted interventions at the border. In this case, Chair, it was initially a straightforward case of immigration status and it became an issue of my officer’s concern for her wellbeing. If you can engineer the permission of the individual, what I would like to do is to write to you with a more fulsome background to the case.
Q536 Chair: Of course. But you are enquiring into this? You have started your own investigation?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I have investigated it. I am satisfied there was no racist or ethnic dimension to it.
Q537 Mr Winnick: One recognises the sensitivity of this because, if this particular person had come in and committed a terrorist crime, you, Sir Charles, would be asked, “Why didn’t you stop her?” so one recognises the sensitivity. I am going to be a little critical but I prefaced it because you should not think that any of us—regardless of what political party we happen to belong to—do not understand how difficult it must be for your organisation to get it right. But it is a fact, is it not, Sir Charles, how absolutely crucial it is that those who do have Islamic faith and wear clothes accordingly, perhaps even more so with a male, should not feel in any way that because of his or her faith there is going to be discrimination. It is a very difficult one, which I have already said. It is sensitive but to get it right is not only important for public safety but for a general feeling of confidence in your organisation.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes. I would just like to reiterate that, having investigated, I am satisfied there was no racist or ethnic dimension to this. I am satisfied, incidentally, that it was not a pre-targeted intervention either. It was simply a question of in discussion with my officer when she had arrived, my officer being concerned about her immigration status, which needed to be clarified, including with some phone calls to the United States, which is one of the things that took the time, and in the course of that some concerns about her wellbeing.
Q538 Chair: But you will write to me?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I would very much like to.
Q539 Mr Jayawardena: On this point, it is a slightly wider suggestion I would like to make to you. Would you not agree that the customer service provided by your officers at the UK border could be interpreted differently by different people and, perhaps, it is the case of comparing the what with the how, and the how might need to be improved to ensure that people who are in a minority group do not feel that they are being victimised, even if they are not.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Of course it is important, and I am always looking for ways in which I can improve, not only the element of security at the border but the manner in which my organisation interfaces with the legitimate travelling public. I absolutely get that. Can I just make a point about Heathrow, which may not be widely known? 53% of my staff there are from the ethnic minority communities.
Chair: Excellent.
Q540 James Berry: Picking up on something that you said in response to Mr Jayawardena’s question. Do you think the hotspot programme is the right approach to secure external borders when they come under intense pressures at places like Lesbos?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I think it is a very, very important part of it, and it is very important to understand the scale of the challenge that the Greeks and the Italians, in particular, face. I have talked about our 11,000 mile border. Of course the Greeks and the Italians have a comparable challenge in many ways, so I think it is very important to understand that, one, the hotspot programme is an important contributor to improving the manner in which these migrants are being handled and the security of the external Schengen border is being managed. It is also important that the European Union in the wider sense, not just the Schengen countries but the European Union recognises the need to help those countries through Frontex with some expertise that it can provide.
Q541 James Berry: Yes. I think that the Greek ambassador’s view was that there simply were not enough Frontex officers there, but you are saying we do not contribute to that?
Sir Charles Montgomery: We do.
James Berry: We are not part of it but we contribute expertise.
Sir Charles Montgomery: We are not part of Frontex. We are not a member of Frontex but we have over 20 people deployed to the Frontex operation in the Mediterranean on land, and of course, as many members of the Committee will be aware, we have the VOS Grace, a ship in the Mediterranean patrolling at the moment with Border Force members on board under the Frontex umbrella.
Q542 James Berry: Now you say we have one of the strongest borders in the world. I think that is your evidence. It is better, is it not, than the external Schengen border?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Without a question.
Q543 James Berry: Would you agree that it is right, certainly at the moment, for us to be outside the Schengen agreement in order to protect us from domestic terrorism?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am going to answer this question only from a security perspective.
James Berry: Of course, yes.
Sir Charles Montgomery: From a security perspective we are able, by not being a member of Schengen, to exert the controls that we as a nation choose to. That gives us an enormous advantage in the flows of both passengers and goods. I would also say that as an island nation, we have a particularly unique strength with our maritime border. Hence my answer to your first point: do we have a stronger border than the external Schengen border? Without a question.
Q544 Chair: There was a report by the Chief of Staff of Europol, Brian Donald, who said that around 1,000 British people are letting migrants travel illegally in the boots of their cars to smuggle them into the United Kingdom. Indeed, I think your own figures suggest that between April and July of this year, 30,000 stowaway attempts have been discovered compared to 2014 when the total figure was 39,000, so it has gone up enormously as a result of, presumably, you would say your officers who are detecting more, but it could well be that there are just more people coming.
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is both, Chair. I think I gave credit last time I was before your Committee to the work of the French as well. Those numbers are indeed higher. Those numbers—
Q545 Chair: Indeed, but I am concerned about the 1,000 British citizens who are involved in smuggling people in to this country. How many prosecutions have there been in order to send out a message that they should not do this kind of thing?
Sir Charles Montgomery: That is not an issue for me to answer.
Q546 Chair: No, I know it is not an issue for you but, presumably, you would like to know this kind of figure. I realise you are all separate organisations, but wouldn’t you like to know? Wouldn’t you be in a position to tell us how many people have been prosecuted for trying to get people over—not your personal border—the border that you are supposed to be protecting?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes, of course, all of the people in the juxtaposed controls are subject to French prosecution not British prosecution.
Q547 Chair: Sure, but how many have been prosecuted here? Would you not know?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am afraid I don’t know. No, I don’t know. I am more than happy to answer your question by correspondence.
Q548 Chair: Are you telling this Committee that the fact that more have been discovered means that you are putting a greater effort into looking into people’s boots than perhaps you were a year ago?
Sir Charles Montgomery: We are. But it is not just looking into people’s boots, Chair, as you will know because you have been to the juxtaposed controls on several occasions. We use state of the art technology, as well as the more manual processes of search as well. The dynamic, of course, is that: one, there have been many more people in this year in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais seeking to come across the border, and we have strengthened our controls, physical and human search, and we are finding many more people between the French authorities, law enforcement and commercial, and Border Force.
Q549 Mr Winnick: When you appeared before us, Sir Charles, you were asked about staff morale and you said it is improving and then inevitably you added there is still work to do. That was when? 22 July 2014. I am wondering about the latest situation because there was a survey of 490 staff, who were all members of the PCS, the survey was between 10 and 24 November last year, so there was some four or five months difference. One officer told ITV, “Staff are demotivated, angry and resentful of the circumstances they find themselves in”. The Minister said, as Ministers will say, “The results of this survey are not representative of the views of staff across Border Force”. Now that may or may not be so, but it does seem to be a good deal of dissatisfaction, and that was, as I say, near the end of last year. Are you going to tell us that in the year since the improvements have been so substantial that, if there was such a poll, it would be nothing like the figures I have quoted?
Sir Charles Montgomery: There has been a more recent poll than the one you referred to and the figures remain stubbornly low. Let me explain a bit of the context to that. I naturally am very interested in the feedback of all the members and my people. I have said to this Committee before, my people are my crown jewels in Border Force and their morale matters to me a very great deal and, therefore it is a matter of real concern to me that my two trade unions have on the one hand advised them not to complete the staff survey, and on the other hand advised them that, if they did complete the staff survey these are the points they might want to register. You will understand why I am concerned with that situation, for whatever reason, because the information would be really valuable for me and the way in which it is handled makes it very much less valuable for me. I get a low return rate from my people because of that, and the feedback has got to be offset by the guidance that the unions give them by way of feedback. I am concerned about that but neither do I want to pretend that there are not underlying issues.
I remember in my very first appearance before this Committee I did say that this was going to be a five-year transformation programme. It was going to take five years to shift attitudes that had been deeply ingrained.
Q550 Mr Winnick: To make virtually everyone happy in the Border Force will take five years?
Sir Charles Montgomery: It is a five-year change programme is what I said, and it is the people line that will take the longest, about training, and so on. Naturally, I am concerned about the feedback that this gives. Naturally I am concerned that the feedback has been somewhat tainted by the way in which it has been handled, but I would say this. Members of the Committee will have been to see my men and women in the frontline, and I would doubt any will not have picked up on the sense of purpose and clear commitment that they hold to do a very difficult job in sometimes very testing environments and circumstances. It is tangible. To my mind that is one of the greatest proofs of high morale in any organisation, commitment to the task and the sense of purpose in conducting that task.
There are underlying issues in Border Force, which I absolutely acknowledge. The issue of legacy terms and conditions is a corrosive one. It is a very difficult one for us to work out with the trade unions to try to find some way through this. It has been extremely difficult and it still is extremely difficult. There are some longstanding issues here, which really do pick away at the sense of cohesiveness. That is why I say it will take time to sort this out.
Q551 Mr Winnick: Yes. I understand that. When the survey was conducted it was on some aspects of the work. For example, 98% said they believed there were not enough staff to check vehicles, while 48% said they could not check passports as a result of staff shortages, almost 65% of staff revealed they had been removed from Custom checks to check passports and 80% said this happened on a weekly basis. Those sorts of aspects of very, very testing work, as you rightly say. There is no doubt about that. Would you say that on those aspects that I have quoted there is less dissatisfaction?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I don’t think there would be, actually, because I think there is a very deep rooted commitment in my former customs people to get more customs work done and the same is true on immigration. What I can say is that my organisation has become more adept over the last 12 months in managing the resource we do have on the frontline between the customs and immigration controls. It has become more adept at doing that, and that is demonstrated in the much improved performance that we have achieved in some of our seizures in the customs channels at airports.
Q552 Chair: Thank you. An undercover reporter working for BBC South East, disguised as an illegal immigrant, was offered 12 jobs when he went looking for jobs in the Kent and Sussex area. The Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey has commented that there are many illegal migrants who are, in his words, “Hanging around Cobham services”. We understand that enforcement is a matter for the UK Visa and Immigration Service, for—
Sir Charles Montgomery: Immigration enforcement.
Chair: Of course. Your job stops at the border but, clearly, these people have managed to evade you and your staff and, as you have said, the border is not 100% secure. You would like it to be secure but nothing is perfect in life when you are dealing with so many miles of coastline. Anyway, they got through the border. They passed through your staff, whether their morale is high or not they got through, and they are wandering round Kent and Sussex being offered jobs. Where does your responsibility end and why are these people not being tracked if they enter the country?
Sir Charles Montgomery: My responsibility as Director General Border Force is to make sure that none of these people get across the border. Of course, many of these that you are referring to, Chair, have come across the border from the juxtaposed controls where the sheer weight of numbers over the summer months just simply made it a very, very difficult operation and you will be aware of the—
Q553 Chair: It is not just the summer months. We have been holding inquiries for seven years. This has been going on for years.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes. But the numbers, Chair, you will recognise, increased enormously over the summer.
Q554 Chair: Sure. Anyway, they got through. They evaded you, by whatever method, and they have come into Kent and Sussex. They are wandering around Kent and Sussex, maybe some in Mr Loughton’s constituency, looking for work and nobody seems to be doing anything about this.
Sir Charles Montgomery: They are. It isn’t me, but they are, I can assure you. My responsibility doesn’t just end as Director General Border Force.
Chair: No.
Sir Charles Montgomery: As a member of the departmental board, of course, I have a corporate responsibility to do all we can to align resource—
Q555 Chair: Yes. Shall I send you the film, so you can see this for yourself?
Sir Charles Montgomery: By all means do.
Q556 Chair: They are walking around with impunity being offered jobs and being given advice by shopkeepers in these counties as to how to evade people like you, and it is all on open camera. This is happening not in a clandestine way, quite openly.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Of course I would be grateful for the video. The second point that I want to come back to, Chair, is that what I want from the interviews that occur when people are apprehended by immigration enforcement or others, of course, is intelligence about the routes and the traffickers that enable them to get here. I do get that and it does help me identify routes that are being used.
Q557 Tim Loughton: As somebody who obviously has a constituency in Sussex where this is happening, what I am most concerned about is on several fronts these people appear to be missed. Either they have come in clandestinely, in which case you would not be responsible unless you had been able to find them in boots or whatever. Secondly, they have come in having gone through your staff, juxtaposed controls or whatever. Then thirdly, apparently they are being employed well below the minimum wage in exceedingly illegal and dodgy circumstances. Various different agencies, Border Force, immigration control, trading standards and so on, should have an interest in these people, yet, as the Chairman says, they appear to be wandering around with impunity. Are there any joint roundtable discussions or strategic planning going on about how to deal with these groups of people?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Within the Home Office—and I am part of that of course—we do join up the operation between UK Visas and Immigration out of the country, immigration enforcement on organised immigration, crime, National Crime Agency, Border Force and then the in-country agencies. We do that on an end to end basis. I am afraid that since I am here as an expert witness, as it were, I cannot talk about what is happening when those people are in the country.
Q558 Tim Loughton: Okay. Sir Charles, you made the very valid point just now that you are obviously interested in the intelligence when they are apprehended—
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am indeed, yes.
Tim Loughton: —or when people are after them as to how they got in, in case it is on your watch, effectively, that they have been able to get into the country. How actively is that information coming back to you and how have you changed or adapted your methods in order to do something about it, because apparently it is as big a problem as it ever has been?
Sir Charles Montgomery: The intelligence comes back to me on a very regular basis, mainly through the immigration enforcement but also through the National Crime Agency. I do adapt my posture and you will probably have seen some of the intensification exercises we are doing on certain routes at certain times to respond to that intelligence that we receive, so the intelligence is coming back on a regular basis. Of course, it isn’t absolutely comprehensive because, as you pointed out, there are still some people in the country who have yet to be apprehended. But I do get sufficiently good intelligence to enable me to understand the routes on which I should be concentrating my effort.
Q559 Tim Loughton: Are you aware of how many of them have been prosecuted and how successful they appear to be prosecuted?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am not, no.
Q560 Tim Loughton: Again, although that is not your direct responsibility, as you said before, surely that is a key part of intelligence to be able to inform you as to how successful you are being at apprehending or preventing these people coming into the country in the first place?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Intelligence doesn’t require the prosecution. The intelligence requires the interview process that precedes the prosecution. It is that that I get in sum that enables me to take intelligence-led interventions.
Q561 Tim Loughton: With respect, wouldn’t it enhance your understanding of the situation if you see a big increase in the number of people being prosecuted in this arena? It might suggest to you that either you are not doing your job well and they are getting into the country but somebody else is doing their job better in order to apprehend them or you are choking off their ways of getting through and that shared intelligence is working rather better?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes, absolutely, and of course the answer to your questions are: yes, yes, and yes, not least of which because more successful prosecutions in the country is a deterrent to stop people from making the journey in the first place, so of course that is the case. The point I am making is that it does not require—and you would not expect it to—the prosecution to trigger the intelligence that allows me to take intelligence-led interventions on routes into the United Kingdom.
Q562 Naz Shah: Sir Charles, you mentioned two points earlier. I am going to ask two questions, very different ones. First of all, have you had any more resources out of the Spending Review or the Autumn Statement?
Sir Charles Montgomery: You will have seen that the police and some of the counter-terrorism institutions received some enhancements and, if not enhancements, then at least real cash.
Chair: I think Ms Shah is asking about your area not the police.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes, but it is important I think to see it in context because—
Chair: Well, what about you and your programme?
Sir Charles Montgomery: —I operate very closely with those organisations.
Chair: We know about them. We want to know about you.
Sir Charles Montgomery: Then for myself of course you will know the core Home Office has received a reduced allocation over the CSR period of something in the region of 25%. That of course has yet to be allocated across the various areas of the Home Office. That process will conclude sometime in the springtime and I will no doubt be part of that negotiation and that discussion with the Home Office to determine what Border Force eventually settles on.
Q563 Chair: Excuse me for interrupting, Naz Shah. You have had 25% less?
Sir Charles Montgomery: The core Home Office. You will recall that the—
Chair: Ms Shah is asking about the Border Force.
Sir Charles Montgomery: But I didn’t say Border Force. I said—
Chair: No, but that is what she is asking about. You are not head of the whole Home Office. She is asking specifically about Border Force. Tell us about your budget in Border Force.
Sir Charles Montgomery: I thought I had answered the question. I have given you the fullest answer that I could, which is that we have departmental allocation that is yet to be disaggregated among the operating areas, so I cannot tell you what my budget is going to be over the CSR years.
Q564 Naz Shah: Would it be fair to say that you expect it to be decreased not increased?
Sir Charles Montgomery: I am simply saying that I do not have my allocation. I cannot answer the question honestly.
Q565 Naz Shah: Thank you. You referred earlier on to 53% of your staff being of BME—black and minority ethnic—communities. How many then are in your leadership positions at board level, director level and so on?
Sir Charles Montgomery: There aren’t any. I only have three directors in Border Force and that is one female and two male. I don’t have any of the ethnic minority communities in there. We are actively looking to bring our ethnic talent in through leadership positions in the frontline. There are some outstanding individuals; including those running I think two of the terminals at Heathrow at the moment. Those are the sorts of opportunities that people can take to work their way through the organisation. But the answer to your question is I don’t have any.
Q566 Naz Shah: Would you say it is acceptable for an organisation of that magnitude not to have any BME staff in senior positions?
Sir Charles Montgomery: No, clearly not; clearly not. If I could say so, it is an issue for the Home Office as a whole as well as Border Force. I am the diversity champion for the Home Office. I believe deeply in it. I will not rest until I start seeing some real improvements in this and, at the moment, Border Force is one of a number who simply don’t have enough ethnic minorities at a higher level. Of course you cannot just simply click your fingers and create an ethnic minority director. There is of course a process of selection, but there is a process of feeding through and it is that feeding through process that we are so working on at the moment, if that helps to answer your question.
Q567 Chair: We are grateful for that commitment, since you are the diversity champion for the Home Office. Just to clarify, you said that there is going to be a reduction overall of 25%. You do not know what the allocation is for Border Force. Given the very difficult situation and the difficult climate we find ourselves in, and the crucial role that Border Force plays in all this, in my view, just as much as counter-terrorism you have a very, very tough task and very difficult challenges in keeping our borders secure. When do you expect to know what your budget is going to be and where these cuts are going to fall? I accept that you don’t know the amount but when do you expect to be told so you can plan your measures?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Clearly, I would expect to know before the start of the business year, which is when I would need the allocation to set out a business plan for the next four business years. Can I just make a point here, Chairman, because I think it is a vital one? I am indeed a very important instrument of national security, or should I say more accurately my organisation is. I also in the last two years have managed to achieve respectively 8% and 10% productivity gains over those two-year periods. I expect the taxpayer to look to me to do better with the public money that I am being given. I would expect, therefore—building on that kind of track record—that I should be producing productivity gains in each of the next four years as well.
Q568 Chair: Basically you are saying, “We don’t mind. We will take the cuts because we have done this in the past and we have improved productivity, even though we have reduced numbers”?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Of course I did not say that, as you will only be too well aware. But what I am saying is that I do expect to be held to account for not only the effectiveness of my organisation but its efficiency too. The capital investment that I am putting in to modernise my organisation, whether it be through this hugely dynamic programme of e-gate rollouts, the replacement of the IT systems at my frontline, whether it be systems like the “registered traveller” and so on. I do expect those to generate real efficiency for the organisation and I expect to be able to do my business for less.
Chair: Excellent. Now you have exited Mr Loughton on that and he wants a final supplementary.
Q569 Tim Loughton: On a point of detail, how do you define productivity gains within the Border Agency? What sorts of things are we talking about?
Sir Charles Montgomery: Within Border Force? Well, a straightforward measure of output against input. In other words, input costs—the money I am given—against the outputs. The outputs are largely volumetric but, of course, must be also offset against the success we have in terms of meeting our operating mandate, our Cyclamen mandate and our control strategy for the seizure of commodities coming across the border. The majority of that productivity is, therefore, based on the output volumes that we handle coming across the border set against the costs. There is an element then of the achievement of outcomes—
Q570 Tim Loughton: Where is the qualitative outcome—
Sir Charles Montgomery: The outcomes are the qualitative element as well.
Q571 Tim Loughton: In what sense?
Sir Charles Montgomery: In terms of the amount of drugs we might seize. In terms of the amount of cigarettes we might seize. In terms of the amount of firearms we seize. In terms of the numbers of forgeries we detect.
Q572 Tim Loughton: As applied to persons, how do you define the qualitative outcome?
Sir Charles Montgomery: First of all, of course, the headline requirement is to meet the operating mandate that Ministers put upon me for 100% checks at the borders, as I am mandated to do, and the Cyclamen mandate as well. That would be the first point. In terms of people it would be about the numbers of imposters, forgeries, refusals we make at the border as well, so there will be a number of metrics.
Q573 Tim Loughton: Are there targets within that in terms of—
Sir Charles Montgomery: Yes.
Q574 Tim Loughton: Right. So you have a target for the number of people you should apprehend, regardless of whether some of them turn out not to be apprehendable?
Sir Charles Montgomery: There is a judgment of course about all these targets, but we do have an increasing degree of apprehension at the border over the last two or three years.
Chair: Thank you. Sir Charles, as always, thank you very much for coming in. I will send you the video and you will send me a letter with the information that we have requested.
Sir Charles Montgomery: I will, including the letter about your constituent.
Chair: Thank you very much. If you could do that by Friday I would be most grateful. Thank you for coming in.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Haras Rafiq, Managing Director, Quilliam, and Farooq Aftab, Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association UK, gave evidence.
Q575 Chair: Mr Rafiq and Mr Aftab, thank you very much for coming. We are most grateful to you for coming to give evidence on the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into the counter-narrative and counter-terrorism. I want to start with a question about matters that are before the House and will be voted on tomorrow. It is possible that the House of Commons might vote to go to war in Syria to have limited airstrikes. Given what you have said in the past about these issues, Mr Rafiq, in other words the radicalisation of young Muslims in this country and others as a result of foreign policy issues, what effect do you think airstrikes against Syria will have on radicalisation? We don’t want a whole discussion, yes or no—
Haras Rafiq: Sure.
Chair: Is it going to have an effect?
Haras Rafiq: I don’t think it will have a direct effect on increasing the numbers of radicalisation. Currently there are people who will blame defects in our foreign policy as the only root cause of people being radicalised, and I still feel and agree with the majority of experts that it is very, very rare for somebody to actually travel thousands of miles to go and take Yazidi sex slaves and also kill other Muslims because of our failed foreign policies. However, I think that there will be recruiting sergeants available. There will be narratives available for charismatic recruiters who will hone in on the whole crusader narrative—
Q576 Chair: As a result of airstrikes being—
Haras Rafiq: Yes. I think there will be more manipulation.
Q577 Chair: That is what you mean by indirect? Not direct, people won’t suddenly decide, “I am going to go and fight” but others might use it as an opportunity to radicalise?
Haras Rafiq: I expect others to use it but it won’t necessarily be the reason why people go and join groups like ISIL.
Q578 Chair: That is very clear. Mr Aftab, do you think that, as a result of launching airstrikes on Syria, members of the community might be radicalised further and decide to go to Syria, or do you agree with Mr Rafiq that it will happen but it will be indirect, because others will use that in order to radicalise?
Farooq Aftab: I think it depends on the nature of the airstrikes. If it is going to be in general population areas where civilians are killed then, obviously, that is going to give rise to people to feed on this, particularly IS. But if you are targeting specific targets, like oil tankers, ammunition, storage, and so on, that I think is more sensible. But a more sensible approach, we would say, is to work with the neighbouring countries and military action alone is not going to solve this.
Q579 Chair: Yes. That is your personal view but I am just talking about the effect it might have on young people, since you are coming to give evidence on this issue and foreign policy issues are important. Do you think it will have an effect?
Farooq Aftab: If it is targeting civilians and the innocent population we think that will have an effect.
Q580 Chair: A negative effect?
Farooq Aftab: A negative effect. It could lead to further radicalisation.
Q581 Chair: Do you think that will lead to more people going abroad?
Farooq Aftab: We hope not but it gives ammunition, so why give them the ammunition? It is better to prevent it.
Q582 Chair: You are saying people should be careful as to what they are doing out there?
Farooq Aftab: Yes. I think a more sensible and wise strategic approach needs to be adopted.
Q583 Chair: Do you accept there is a foreign policy dimension to the radicalisation of young Muslims?
Farooq Aftab: I think there is an element to that but it is not the sole element, but it is a factor and we think there is a debate that needs to happen.
Q584 Chair: That is very clear. Thank you. Mr Rafiq, you are a firm believer in Prevent. You are almost a poster boy for the Government, in terms of their policies. Why do you like Prevent so much?
Haras Rafiq: If we look at, first of all, the origin of Prevent, I was on the Government task force after 7/7 where the Government came up with a contest strategy and the four Ps and Prevent was one of them. Prevent was always designed to do two things. The first thing was to deal with people once they have actually expressed sympathy, empathy or direct support for—in those days—al-Qaeda inspired extremism and, in that case, either de-radicalise them or, if they are about to commit a crime or they are dangerous, to arrest them. The other half of Prevent, which was always the bigger part of Prevent or PVE—preventing violent extremism, as it was called in 2006 when it was launched—was all about building resilience within our communities, both from a far right perspective and from an Islamist extremist perspective, so that, when youngsters have these recruiters, have these narratives pushed on to them to say, “Come and join our gang and there is the other, the other that hates you, there is a dehumanisation and you have to stand up for oppression against our gang” they have the ability to push back.
Q585 Chair: But you are aware that a lot of people have criticised that view, people like Shami Chakrabarti, Commander Del Babu and others.
Haras Rafiq: I think what they are criticising is what Prevent ended up as. Prevent evolved in a number of different ways and, in 2010, what actually happened was that the coalition Government decided that they would separate the sharp end that I have mentioned, in terms of arresting and de-radicalisation from the resilience building, and in the Prevent review, which was finished in 2011, asked DCLG, the Department for Communities and Local Government, to come up with a strategy to build resilience. That didn’t happen.
Q586 Chair: I am sure that other members will want to question you on that. I want to ask Mr Aftab about his statements concerning the media and Islamophobia. In particular you have said that the media should use its power with responsibility and not create divisions and hatred but promote and foster peace in society. What role do you think the mainstream media has in radicalisation?
Farooq Aftab: The media has a huge role. If you see the portrayal of Islam in the media generally it is really sensational. The wrong images, the wrong concept of Islam is given. If the right voices came forward to give the right message of Islam we think that would help in the fight against radicalisation.
Q587 Chair: What effect do you think a headline like this would have on the Muslim community? Because I know it has had more complaints than any other newspaper article. Would this create a lot of concern and tension within the community?
Farooq Aftab: It is clearly sensational. It is not going to help matters. You don’t see positive stories on the front page. That is what we should be promoting if we want to create community dialogue and cohesion in society. But we don’t see that so we think from our end the media has a huge role to play and we work and we hope that will happen.
Q588 Chair: Do you think it is just positive stories? Because you cannot create positive stories when they are not there. Do you think they are there and they are just not taken up?
Farooq Aftab: I think there are hundreds of positive stories. We work daily with youngsters throughout the UK. We raise money for British charities, we feed the homeless, do blood drives. All these things work against radicalisation, engagement with youngsters. Those stories are not really picked up as front page. If they were that would help.
Q589 Chair: You have given some practical examples. You want to see young children in schools give a pledge of loyalty in school assemblies, because you think that will mean they will be totally integrated and that would make them, in your words, ingrained at a very young age?
Farooq Aftab: Yes, we believe it will help. Our youth organisation, be it the ladies’, the men’s, we call it the youth group, we have pledges of loyalty. We have had them for 100 years since the inception of our organisation. We think this will help to foster the unity and loyalty to your country, which Islam promotes. Islam completely promotes loyalty to your country and we think this will help.
Q590 Chair: You are here because you are one of the very few people who are prepared to put out a counter-narrative, as opposed to specifically supporting other initiatives. You had an original list of six suggestions to try and put a counter-narrative out. Do you think the Government and Parliament, and those who make these decisions, are failing to get that counter-narrative across? You talked about making imams and Muslim leaders issue sermons condemning ISIS. You have said that Muslim parents should play a role in answering the questions put forward by their children. You want to see a crackdown on hate preachers. Is that your counter-narrative? Do you think that we are just not pushing this counter-narrative strongly enough?
Farooq Aftab: We have suggested a number of things. We applaud steps and initiatives taken by the Government to handle this issue but it is going to take a lot of investment, a lot of energy, a lot of dealing with the grassroots issues on the ground, to have the right counter-narrative. You need to look at unemployment. You need to look at educational issues. You have hate preachers. This has been going on for years. You have preachers from Pakistan, other countries, coming here under the radar who preach, and you have—
Q591 Chair: You would like to see them banned?
Farooq Aftab: We think anything that affects the law and order of the country that should be clamped down on.
Chair: Thank you.
Q592 Mr Winnick: You are no doubt aware that the poll mentioned by the Chair in The Sun has been the subject of a good deal of criticism. That it wasn’t done in the way one would expect. That is your view about that sensational headline?
Farooq Aftab: I think it is clearly a sensational headline. If you speak to the hundreds and thousands of Muslims in the UK they are law abiding citizens. There is an issue with some elements but clearly that hasn’t helped.
Q593 Mr Winnick: Are you aware that on that very same day there was a letter in The Times from 200 Islamic scholars who condemned terrorism and made it quite clear that what was happening, although in the name of Islam, was a total perversion of Islam. That was a very useful letter, which I am sure you saw at the time.
Farooq Aftab: I have heard of that. I haven’t seen it myself but I have heard of that letter.
Mr Winnick: I will ask the Clerk to show you a copy.
Chair: Please proceed.
Q594 Mr Winnick: What I want to ask the two of you, particularly perhaps Mr Rafiq, in 2010 apparently the organisation sent a secret list—I don’t know why it was a secret list—to Charles Farr the Director General of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, as we know. In it, it was alleged the Muslim Council of Britain had extremist sympathisers. It was an attack clearly on the Muslim Council of Britain. Do you stand by that?
Farooq Aftab: Who sent that? Who are you asking? Are you asking me?
Chair: It is not Mr Aftab who sent the letter.
Haras Rafiq: First of all, I wasn’t at Quilliam in 2010 but I do know of the particular incident that you are referring to. First of all, there was no secret list. It was a report by The Guardian. This report was published by Quilliam and is on the website, so it wasn’t a secret list. That itself was sensationalist reporting. If you are referring to the content within that report that said the Government should change the way that it worked with the MCB and the way that it dealt with them and approached them, yes, and I think that has been actioned out and evidenced by what they did in terms of signing the Istanbul declaration. What they did in terms of supporting anti-Semitism, what they have done in terms of supporting the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan ideology, they are an organisation that needs to be brought into mainstream traditional classical Islam and away from the politicised versions. That is an ideology that certainly this Government now has named as the root cause of producing the narratives that are driving our youngsters to become radicalised.
Q595 Mr Winnick: Are you saying that there has been little change since 2010 in your view of the Muslim Council?
Haras Rafiq: What I am saying is that the Government certainly has changed the way that it engages with them.
Q596 Mr Winnick: What about your view as an organisation?
Haras Rafiq: At this moment in time, if you were to look at some of the preachers that they support, some of the individuals that they support, they are still very much within the Salafist hate preacher bracket. For example, there is Haitham al-Haddad who actually believes in female genital mutilation. He believes that offensive jihad, jihad al qital, rather than defensive jihad, is something that should be taught to all Muslims. Yes, they are still supporting individuals such as this and, therefore, I think that this needs to be considered when engaging with them.
Q597 Mr Winnick: Could I put this to you as delicately as possible? Isn’t it very crucial that organisations that represent faith groups or generally ethnic groups, be they Islam or Hindu or Jewish, should have the broad confidence of the community? The question I would ask both of you is: do you feel that you have the confidence of the broad range of Muslims who totally reject terrorism as much as we all do? Do you feel that?
Haras Rafiq: I will answer that. First of all, we are not a Muslim representative organisation. We have never claimed to be nor are we. We are an organisation that represents British citizens. We are not even 100% Muslim in terms of our labour and staff—the senior management happen to be Muslim—so we have never claimed to be representative. Secondly, if you look at our database, and you look at the number of phone calls that we get and the number of e-mails that we get, especially with the unfortunate rise of ISIL, that particular outreach within the British Muslim communities—and I hasten to add that there is no such thing as a British Muslim community—has increased, certainly, over the last year, year and a half that I have been there.
Chair: We will be coming to some of that other stuff later. Naz Shah.
Q598 Naz Shah: Mr Rafiq, I would like to share something with you. This Committee also invited the Council of Mosques for Bradford to give evidence. The Council of Mosques wrote to the Chair and copied me in, and if I can read an extract, “Thank you for inviting us to give oral evidence today. We note that you have grouped us with Quilliam, a self-styled set-up about which there are serious reservations within the mainstream Islamic faith community regarding its integrity and legitimacy on the issue of counter-extremism”. The Bradford Council of Mosques, which is within my constituency, this week have refused to share the platform and be on the same panel as Quilliam. Quilliam have also argued that there exists a “preventing Prevent lobby” that is frustrating the Government’s counter-extremism strategy. I put it to you that there is a deep concern among British Muslims about the Government’s Prevent strategy, and that this concern is legitimately raised by organisations that work in and with grassroots Muslim organisations. While you have just said you are not representative—I accept that—how well would you say you engage with those grassroots Muslim communities that you are trying to de-radicalise?
Haras Rafiq: We have just had an approach from a delegation for between 500 to 800 mosques in the UK that want to engage with us. That is *Jamir Ali Sunna*. The trustee also happens to be a trustee of MINAB. We haven’t quite finalised that yet. As I mentioned, we are getting more and more Muslim organisations calling out and reaching out to us but, again, I just want to reaffirm that we are in the situation where we are dealing with counter-extremism, counter-radicalisation, and giving policy advice and guidance. If you look at de-radicalisation, and our reports “In and Out of Islamism” on our website, you will find anecdotal testimonies of people that have been de-radicalised.
Q599 Naz Shah: Moving on from that, let’s just look at something else from The Guardian a few weeks ago. Professor Matthew Goodwin who led our task force on anti-hatred was quoted as saying, “Instead the task force consulted widely with the Quilliam Foundation, a thinktank that, some say, lacks credibility with many ordinary Muslims, pushes theories of radicalisation that are typically not supported within the academic community, and undertakes research that is seldom subject to rigorous peer review”. That is coming from a very senior academic who advised—
Haras Rafiq: I know Matthew. First of all, we were not consulted by any taskforce on hatred. Secondly, from a Prevent perspective, Quilliam as an organisation has not received any Home Office funding, Prevent funding, since 2011. We have only really started engaging with the Government more so over the last year, year and a half. Quilliam was never engaged with the taskforce, so I don’t know where that has come from. In terms of academia, we have a number of PhDs, a number of doctors that work for us as an organisation. I was at a coalition of the 40 leading Secretaries of State, with all of their academic backroom staff, who were reviewing our work and it has been quoted by a number of universities.
Q600 Naz Shah: You just said you worked before 2010 with the Government. You have been on the taskforce, not the anti-hatred one but you have been on the counter-extremism one and—
Haras Rafiq: That was this year.
Naz Shah: —you contributed to that this year. But you have worked with this Government prior to the coalition, albeit you might not have been with Quilliam. On the back of what I have just said to you, do you appreciate his concerns around the standard of your work and the scrutiny that it is subjected to?
Haras Rafiq: I reject those comments and so do the overwhelming majority of academics that we have worked with.
Q601 Naz Shah: Can I ask you then how many individuals have you worked with specifically on de-radicalisation, and given the Tommy Robinson affair, particularly, have you altered your markers of success? How do you measure your success?
Haras Rafiq: We measure our success in a number of ways. First of all, we never claimed that Tommy Robinson was de-radicalised. We merely facilitated his leaving the EDL along with his cousin Kevin Carroll, which I think most people agreed at the time it was a good thing to do. We have never had any formal business relationship with Tommy Robinson or with Kevin Carroll. Secondly, in terms of the numbers of de-radicalisation, I cannot share them with you—I will tell you why—because we are bound by confidentiality under the Channel programme. We have mentors that work within the Channel programme. In terms of other metrics of success, the reports and the output that were produced have been quoted by leading academics around the world. For example, “Documenting the ‘Virtual Caliphate’” where we are the only organisation in the world that for one month monitored ISIL’s bespoke unique propaganda and measured that they were producing 38 pieces of bespoke unique propaganda every day, on average, and then countering it.
Q602 Chair: Thank you. That is very helpful. We are going to have a vote shortly, which means that I will adjourn the Committee.
One question to you about your proposals that jailed Muslim extremists should be segregated in their own wings. Is that a Quilliam policy?
Haras Rafiq: No.
Chair: It isn’t?
Haras Rafiq: It has never been said by anybody at Quilliam.
Chair: We will come back and explore that later.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
On resuming-
Q603 Chair: My apologies for the interruption. That, I am afraid, is parliamentary democracy in action. I was asking about prisons, Mr Rafiq. I think it was a quote from Jonathan Russell, who said that it is essential to prevent the radicalisation of other inmates in prison. Do you now remember that?
Haras Rafiq: I have just spoken to Jonathan, who happens to be here with me. The question that I was asked was, “Has Quilliam ever said that Muslims should be segregated in prison?” He never said that. The context of the conversation that he was having with the journalist where he was quoted was where he was discussing the two different strategies, one to either segregate or one to allow into general population. The comment that he made was that prisons have a duty of care from a safeguarding perspective for the general population to consider what it does with convicted terrorists.
Q604 Chair: Yes. These are convicted terrorists who you think ought to be segregated from others, or they do not need to be segregated?
Haras Rafiq: He was not espousing a view, but if you are asking me my opinion, my opinion is that neither has worked. We have tried both. There are countries around the world that have tried to segregate, and there are countries around the world that have tried to allow convicted terrorists to mix in the general population, hoping that they will de-radicalise. What I think we need more than that is a more effective de-radicalisation and rehabilitation strategy, both here in the UK and around the world.
Q605 Chair: That is very helpful. Mr Aftab, on the internet and social media you have a lot of young members in your organisation. Clearly it is now established that social media and the world wide web is being used to recruit young people into some of these organisations. How would you deal with that?
Farooq Aftab: We have clearly defined leadership that is lacking in the Muslim community. We have had a caliphate for over 100 years and because of that our message is quite consistent and our history bears to that. When we engage with youngsters, particularly in the social media, we have programmes like “The Voice” where they can engage themselves and get their voices out on issues like this.
Q606 Chair: Sure, but are we doing enough to tackle the radicals? Are we doing enough to tackle the extremists on the internet?
Farooq Aftab: There are reports that ISIS has 50,000 websites. If that is true we should have a million. We need to look at this issue holistically, because they are very clever and the social media is affecting things.
Q607 Chair: Do we have any capabilities of doing this from within the community? Obviously the Government has dialogues with some of the providers, Google and other providers, but do you think the community needs to take responsibility in challenging some of the content on the internet, which they are not doing at the moment?
Farooq Aftab: From our experience, from the Muslim community, our message is consistent and we have challenged it from day one. We are challenging it and we are saying this has nothing to do with Islam. We are engaging with our youngsters at the grass root level, giving them the correct message. Hate preachers, like I said, we need to look at—
Q608 Chair: So do you all actively go on to the world wide web and challenge hate preachers?
Farooq Aftab: Yes, we go on to the web, we use Twitter accounts, we Snapchat, all social media.
Q609 Chair: Against specific individuals?
Farooq Aftab: Not specific individuals but against organisations like ISIS, to give the right message. We run various campaigns and we engage with youngsters on that.
Q610 James Berry: Mr Rafiq, you have outlined, or your organisation has outlined, some reservations you have about the counter-extremism strategy including banning orders, disrupting extremist speakers and restricting access to certain premises. What are the reasons behind those objections, please?
Haras Rafiq: We live in a time where there is a global jihadist insurgency, and any insurgency is not sustainable without some level of ideological support. What we need to do, and we have seen this more so recently after Paris and what has happened around Europe, is to tackle the ideology, tackle the root causes that will take people who maybe have grievances, whether they are genuine, partial or perceived, and manipulate them and turn them into solutions.
If we are to tackle an ideology that is at the backbone of this jihadist insurgency we cannot do that by banning it and hoping it will go away. What will happen is that it will be driven underground. What will happen is that it will take place in places where there is no monitoring of people who are not able to effectively challenge. What we are calling for is legal tolerance against people who are not breaking the law, but civic intolerance. What we mean by that is greater challenge from civil society.
Q611 James Berry: For that to happen, don’t the events you are referring to need to happen in a relatively public setting so that there is the ability for a counter-narrative, for someone to challenge the views, to be orchestrated somehow?
Haras Rafiq: Absolutely. For example, social media is a platform that is easily viewable by everybody else. There are people providing counter-narratives and, for example, we had a video called “Not Another Brother” that had over half a billion impressions in the first seven days, with well over 100,000 views and is up for three DMA awards tonight. If the particular narratives that we wanted to counter were underground we could not have produced this particular video to counter it. Therefore we need these debates where people are breaking the law to happen in a public sphere.
Q612 James Berry: Do you think it is important that organisations that seek or purport to have positions of influence within the community condemn terrorist atrocities, such as that in Paris, absolutely?
Haras Rafiq: I think that the overwhelming majority of people within communities have condemned.
Q613 James Berry: I agree with you that is correct, but do you think it is important that they do?
Haras Rafiq: I think it is important for everybody to condemn, yes, of course, but to make an assumption that one particular group should condemn more than others is unfair. Everybody should condemn, of course.
Q614 James Berry: Mr Aftab, you were critical of The Sun front page that Mr Vaz showed you. Is this the kind of The Sun front page that you want to see more of, “United against ISIS” with a picture of what I assume to be a Muslim lady in Union Jack hijab? More positive?
Farooq Aftab: I think that would be a start. It is a more positive story and that would help.
Q615 James Berry: Yes. You are a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community and your motto is, “Love for all, hatred for none” and like a number of MPs I have been to some of your events. Am I right that you are not aware of any examples of radicalisation of members of your community in this country?
Farooq Aftab: Yes, absolutely correct. We were founded in 1899. Since our inception we were founded and in the UK with over 100 years of history we do not have one incident of radicalisation extremism. The reason, we say, is because we believe we represent Islam in its true and peaceful message. We practise what we preach, we have clear defined leadership. We have a caliph, we have had a caliphate for 100 years. People have only picked up on the Baghdadi Caliphate in the last few years and they give a completely different message of what a caliphate is. We have had no incidents and we hope that because of the message that we portray that will continue.
Q616 James Berry: We heard a lot about the Ottoman Caliphate a few weeks ago, but this is a different caliphate. Your leader is a caliph and sends peaceable instructions out to your community, is that right?
Farooq Aftab: Yes. The Ottoman Caliphate is different. A caliphate is a religious terminology. It is not a political thing. It basically means you carry on the mission of a prophet, which are two things. One, to bring people towards God and secondly to serve humanity, irrespective of your colour, race, religion or creed. That is what we are doing.
Q617 James Berry: You are specifically head of the Ahmadiyya youth organisation. Do I have that right?
Farooq Aftab: I am the Vice-President.
Q618 James Berry: Sorry. What do you do with young people in your community to prevent them being radicalised?
Farooq Aftab: We do a lot of things. We engage them, keep them busy, so we have sporting programmes for youngsters, through football, cricket, whatever it might be. We do a lot of fundraising for charities, so we have the mini version of the London Marathon, which we have been doing for the last 30 years. We were the first Muslim youth group that collected for the Poppy Appeal. We work with the Royal British Legion. This year we are on target to collect around £400,000 for British charities. We also do tree planting, homeless feeding sessions. There are a lot of things that we do.
Q619 James Berry: So it is the message of non-violence and it is keeping young people active in socially useful activities, but apart from that what advice would you give to other Muslim groups or organisations to have the success you have had in avoiding any radicalisation?
Farooq Aftab: We work with other groups as well and we try to work with them, to give them the key message of Islam. Islam is peace. It is a logical religion that is completely compatible with British society. We do not see any incompatibility, and there is an identity crisis with youngsters who believe they cannot be British and Muslims. We are showing that you can, and that it is within the teachings of Islam, and we will continue to do that.
Q620 Chair: Politicians sometimes use the word “caliphate” in a negative way, as we heard last week when we were talking about the Ottoman Caliphate. We should not worry about this word, should we?
Farooq Aftab: Absolutely not. You have no threat from caliphate. Caliphate basically means you are going to carry on the mission of the prophet and that is two things: worship god and bring people to worship god, and secondly to serve humanity. You are free to choose whichever religion you want to worship or not and caliphate has no territorial aspirations. That is what caliphate is.
Q621 Chair: Mr Rafiq, should we be worried about this term?
Haras Rafiq: I think the term has been hijacked. One could argue that kings and queens of ordinary countries are caliphates, and it means different things to different people. I want to take a moment to define what I mean by that.
Chair: Not a long moment, just a very brief one.
Haras Rafiq: Islam and Islamism are different, just as social and socialism are different. For some people the word “caliphate” stirs up this impression of somebody setting up an Islamist caliphate to enforce a particular version of Sharia through law.
Q622 Chair: Yes, but Mr Aftab was not talking about domination over a country.
Haras Rafiq: It means different things to different people. That particular type of caliphate would, I suggest, probably not cause much of a problem for people in Britain and around the world, but the Baghdadi style of caliphate would.
Farooq Aftab: We have had caliphate in the UK since 1984 peacefully living here. Our caliph recently addressed—
Q623 Chair: In Kingston?
Farooq Aftab: In Southfields near Wimbledon. He recently addressed the Dutch Parliament, he has just come back from a tour of Japan. He is promoting peace, and he has been doing that for the last seven or eight years.
James Berry: But your caliph is effectively like the Pope and in fact there was an article I think in The Evening Standard saying, “Our own London caliphate is doing nothing but good” recently.
Chair: Thank you very much. Thank you for being so clear. Mr Umunna.
Q624 Mr Umunna: Mr Rafiq, Quilliam through I think your research fellow, Dr Usama Hasan and also your co-founder, Maajid Nawaz, signed a statement in The New York Times in January of this year on what Muslims can do to reclaim their religion, which was organised by the US Gatestone Institute. Does that ring a bell?
Haras Rafiq: Yes, it does. Was that the organisation that was set up by Dr Zuhdi Jasser?
Q625 Mr Umunna: I think it may be. There are a number of individuals who are associated with it. Are you aware that this Gatestone Institute has carried articles from the likes of the so-called terrorism expert, Steven Emerson, the guy who famously claimed that Birmingham was an example of a totally Muslim city and a no-go area for non-Muslims, and ended up being called “a complete idiot” by the Prime Minister?
Haras Rafiq: I believe that the articles they carried from Steve Emerson were at a time when he was regarded by the US Government as an expert. I think there have been certain things that have happened along the way, and the comments that Steve Emerson made were completely outrageous and, as the Prime Minister said, idiotic. I do not believe that they are supporters of Steve Emerson.
Q626 Mr Umunna: Are you aware that the Gatestone Institute carry articles regularly from Robert Spencer, who is the co-founder of what I believe is an anti-Muslim group called Stop Islamization of America? Are you aware that he has also written for the Gatestone Institute and made various contributions to their activities?
Haras Rafiq: I was not aware of that. Had I been aware of the fact that there was an organisation that was supporting Robert Spencer I certainly would not have allowed Quilliam’s name to be associated with that, but I will certainly check that.
Q627 Mr Umunna: I am slightly surprised by what you say, given that he was due to speak at an EDF march in Woolwich in 2013 and was banned from entering the UK as Ministers deemed his presence not to be conducive to the public good. Presumably you were unaware of that?
Haras Rafiq: Sorry, EDF march?
Mr Umunna: Yes, he was due to speak—
Chair: EDL, I think.
Mr Umunna: Sorry, EDL. He was due to speak at an EDL march in 2013, not the electricity company. I have just paid my bill, as it happens.
Chair: Order.
Mr Umunna: He was due to speak at an EDL march in 2013 and was banned from entering the UK, and he is a regular contributor to the Gatestone Institute site.
Haras Rafiq: That is a two-part question. The first part is am I aware of who he is and that he was banned from entry in the UK? Yes, I am, because I was one of the people who advised that he should be banned from entry into the UK. The second part of your question, was I aware that he was a contributor to the Gatestone Institute? No, I was not, and I will look into that.
Q628 Mr Umunna: The problem with this Gatestone Institute, Mr Rafiq, is that it is not just this Steven Emerson and also Robert Spencer, it is the general tone of what they carry. So going to 2013, I will give you an example of the kind of things they carry. They carried a blog on 21 June 2013 saying, “Soon the Muslims will be kings of the world”. I wonder what on earth an organisation like your own is doing associating with and signing statements organised by an organisation like the Gatestone Institute who are associated with what some have called quite far right thinktanks and organisations and is associated with, or certainly accused of being associated with, anti-Islamic organisations, commentators and such like.
Haras Rafiq: First of all, the comments that you just made to me, I cannot speak for them in terms of who they are, what they support, who they work with. We do not have a relationship per se. This was a one-off where two Muslim people—that is why I asked you was it Dr Zuhdi Jasser—asked Quilliam people through a personal relationship, “Will you sign a statement that says that Muslims, regular ordinary Muslims, want to reclaim their religion back from extremists?” I think the content of the statement in itself was a just and noble thing to declare, but I will, as I said, check into the fact of what relationship the Gatestone Institute have with people like Robert Spencer. I was not aware that Robert Spencer was writing for them, or had written for them, and I will look into that.
Q629 Mr Umunna: I asked the question just because I have been told privately, but also I do believe that we have taken some evidence in the course of this inquiry or certainly questions have been raised about the extent to which you as an organisation speak for the community. I take what you have said today and whether or not your views are a fair representation of what is going on, it seems to me that when you associate with or have a co-founder signing a statement organised by an institute like the Gatestone Institute, which has a controversial reputation to say the least, in a way there is little surprise I suppose that people will raise questions about the issues you raise and whether you can rightly be said to speak for the communities.
Haras Rafiq: First of all, we do not speak for the communities. Secondly, I think it is a shame that the Bradford Council for Mosques have not come along to share first hand whatever their reservations were. I only hope that it was not a stunt on the day. The third thing I would like to say is that Quilliam does have a vast outreach programme. We have a number of Quilliam societies in universities. We visit schools regularly, running workshops. We connect with young artists around the country. We have a creative season. We had a Quilliam summer ball this year where we had hundreds of people coming along and engaging from different parts of communities and we deal extensively with youngsters. That said, there are always going to be some people within any community that do not like somebody who is tackling Islamist ideology. If that is the case I wear it as a badge of honour. If we are tackling Islamist ideology and Islamists have a problem with us or have issues with us, I take it as a badge of honour. If there are people who are not Islamists then I invite them to meet with us and talk to us.
Chair: Yes, thank you. We get your point.
Q630 Mr Jayawardena: Mr Rafiq, what can the Government do in your view to challenge non-violent extremism without threatening freedom of speech on campuses and elsewhere?
Haras Rafiq: That is a very good question. I think that first of all separate the challenging of the ideology, the non-violent extremist, from Prevent, which is what they have done. The new counter-extremism strategy is being run out of the Home Office and not under the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism. Secondly, I think they need to ensure that they are building civil society coalitions. If we look at the Community Engagement Forum that we both sit on, the clue is in the name.
Mr Jayawardena: I will come on to that in a moment.
Haras Rafiq: It is not a Muslim engagement forum, it is a Community Engagement Forum. There are Muslims and non-Muslims who are part of the debate, to prevent the polarisation and the spread of the far right and Islamist ideology, and focus really on building narratives so that civil society will challenge Islamism and far right extremism in the same way that it would challenge fascism.
Q631 Mr Jayawardena: On that point, what can we do to foster trust between communities and Government, particularly in regards to the Prevent programme, which I know is proving controversial in some sections of British Muslim communities?
Haras Rafiq: First of all, the Prevent programme we need to leave to the sharp end. We need to say that the Prevent programme is for de-radicalisation, rehabilitation and for preventing attacks.
Q632 Mr Jayawardena: Even though there may be concern about it, it is there, it is doing what it has set out to do. What can we do to foster trust in that environment?
Haras Rafiq: In that particular environment, what we need to do is to make sure that the engagement within Muslim communities is not just done through the lens of security and legislation, which is why I believe the counter-extremism strategy will do that. That will be an amalgamation of all the different Government departments coming together and looking at building these coalitions.
Just engaging with Muslims through their faith plays into faith-based identity politics.
Q633 Mr Jayawardena: That comes on I guess to the fact that you referenced a moment ago, that Quilliam holds a consultative role on the Government’s counter-extremism strategy and takes part in the Community Engagement Forum. How are these groups chosen to be on that forum and do you believe that the groups effectively represent Muslim communities?
Haras Rafiq: First, I do not think that the Community Engagement Forum is there to represent the Muslim community, hence the reason why it is called the Community—
Q634 Mr Jayawardena: Perhaps I phrased the question incorrectly, or unclearly. The forum needs to ensure that it is reflective of society, doesn’t it, so how is it reflecting Muslim communities and representing those in that context?
Haras Rafiq: There is a district court judge, there are a few people who are in the Prevent arena. There is an organisation, the only one that is nationally monitoring anti-Muslim hatred and it has been lobbying on anti-Muslim hatred. There are counsellors, there are practitioners—
Q635 Mr Jayawardena: How are these people chosen?
Haras Rafiq: That you will have to ask. I do not know.
Q636 Mr Jayawardena: Mr Aftab, what more in your opinion could be done, either on a governmental or civic level to foster greater harmony between different Islamic groups in Britain?
Farooq Aftab: To engage you would have to engage with the mosques as well. You cannot just leave them out, because a lot of first point of contact for youngsters is the mosque. From there, there is a lack of leadership. Their questions are not answered, and they go to universities or on social media, so you are going to have to engage with everyone on that, and the Government has a part to play on that.
Q637 Mr Jayawardena: Your organisation works with young people. What more in your view can be done to encourage greater participation of harder to reach groups, such as younger people, but also groups such as women in countering extremism in the UK?
Farooq Aftab: A number of things. One of the initiatives we recommended is social engagement through sport for youngsters. We think that could be quite easily done. You can engage youngsters through that, and also get the message across. Ladies organisations, there are a number out there. We have our own separate ladies organisation. They liaise and work with other organisations as well.
Q638 Mr Jayawardena: Is the principle of encouraging people not to “speak against others or their beliefs” compatible with a democratic society such as Britain, which has a commitment to free speech?
Farooq Aftab: I think you have to take it in context. What we are saying is you cannot ridicule or mock people, or provoke. Provocation is not going to lead to solving the issue. If you want to live in a peaceful society we have to look at the bigger picture and look at the strategy of how we are going to deal with things. So there is a limit to everything, and we are saying you should bear that in mind when making decisions.
Q639 Mr Jayawardena: Mr Rafiq, do you have a view on that?
Haras Rafiq: No, I think that, thank god, we live in the kind of secular democracy that we live in, which gives us the right to criticise and scrutinise other faiths and other people, and I do not want to take that away. The only time I think that we should intervene is when somebody is inciting hatred or violence.
Q640 Naz Shah: Just an additional concern to what my colleague, Mr Umunna said. In terms of your links in the US, the Quilliam Foundation appointed Chad Sweet to its board of directors for two years. His political hero is somebody who talks of, “the University of Negroes and Communists” and described gay people as, “Weak, morally sick, wretched”. Would you agree that such alliances at the heart of the Quilliam Foundation strip it of all credibility when it comes to dealing with tackling Islamophobia?
Haras Rafiq: First of all, I assume you are talking about Quilliam US. Quilliam US is a separate entity. It is not a UK entity. It has no trustees or directors sitting on it from the UK. Chad Sweet, you would have to ask Quilliam US. I do not know who he is. I have never met him. I do not know what his political alliances are, but it is a separate entity. It is a 501(c) registered organisation in the US.
Q641 James Berry: Mr Rafiq, we have heard from Inspire and we have now heard from Quilliam. Does it concern you that when Muslim groups support the Government’s Prevent agenda they come under sustained attack from within parts of the Muslim community?
Haras Rafiq: Yes, absolutely it does. I think that it is one of the things that are scaring off a number of Muslims that we meet on a day-to-day basis saying, “We want to do a lot more but we do not want to be attacked, bullied, harassed or even come under death threats” and there are a number of people within Quilliam who are currently the subject of live death threats. Yes, of course it concerns me.
Q642 Chair: Thank you. The questioning today is just as robust questioning as we give to any other witnesses who appear before us, so do not take it personally. That is our job, to be able to ask these questions and scrutinise.
It would be very helpful to the Committee, because the inquiry is focused on a counter-narrative, if you were to write to us—not long screeds, or detailed research, but some quick bullet points, as you have done, Mr Aftab, in the past—on what you think the counter-narrative should be. We are on the quest to find the counter-narrative, because clearly it has not worked so far.
Just to be very clear, we will be hearing from the Bradford Council for Mosques at a future date, so we will be able to hear their particular views on the work that they do, but we are very grateful to both of you for coming in here. Thank you very much and please do give us supplementary evidence if it is something that you wish to do. Thank you very much.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Megan Dunn, President, National Union of Students, and Professor Julius Weinberg, Vice-Chancellor, Kingston University, gave evidence.
Q643 Chair: Professor Weinberg and Ms Dunn, my apologies for keeping you waiting so long. I am afraid we have had two votes in the House, which each take 15 minutes, so we are slightly later than the schedule. We will be as succinct as we possibly can in our questions to you.
I want to start with the same question I posed to the previous two witnesses, only because I think it is fair to give you the chance to answer this, bearing in mind what we have asked you to come and give evidence about. Tomorrow the House of Commons will be voting on whether to take action against Syria, limited air strikes, in order to deal specifically with ISIL. Megan Dunn, do you think this will have any effect in respect of the students and the radicalisation issues that are of concern to this inquiry? Not your own personal views about whether we should, but what effect do you think it will have?
Megan Dunn: I think first I would like to say that I am really pleased to be attending this Committee hearing, and talking to you. NUS takes this topic incredibly seriously, and I think that what we have is a number of legitimate concerns around the implementation of the Prevent duty under the legislation.
Q644 Chair: Yes. We will come on and ask you about that, but what about my specific question?
Megan Dunn: In terms of the vote around Syria, I am not a counter-terrorism expert, or indeed an expert on international relations, despite what my degree might tell you.
Chair: Yes. I was just going to say, you have an MA in it.
Megan Dunn: I think I would stray so far as to say that my—
Q645 Chair: Do you think it will have an effect on people on the campus?
Megan Dunn: I think that students take a really strong interest in matters of international relations and international peace and justice, and that different groups of students will have different opinions. As NUS we have no current policy as to intervention in Syria.
Q646 Chair: Very helpful. Professor Weinberg?
Professor Weinberg: I have even fewer academic credentials in this area. I think in the short term the answer is probably not. There may be some students who are already radicalised who it may just add a little bit. In the long term I think one of the previous witnesses suggested that it would allow for further narratives in that direction, and I think that is the case.
Q647 Chair: Professor Weinberg, the Extremism Analysis Unit, which sounds extremely grand, stated that a number of people who have committed terror-related offences or travelled to fight in Syria had studied at UK universities. It also named and shamed, if I could use those words, Queen Mary College London, Kings College, SOAS and Kingston University as the worst offenders in regards to hate preachers who have been on your campus. How do you react to that, and what are you doing to stop these people coming on to your campus?
Professor Weinberg: I react to that with anger, because I think Kingston University is in the forefront of doing what I consider the right things to do. First, I think the Prime Minister was unfortunately advised to use flawed data that comes from a very dubious source. Unfortunately that data, which comes, we believe, from a fairly right-wing advocacy group that is trying to push a certain position, rather like some of those American groups you were recently describing, managed to get that data into the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism at the Home Office and the Prime Minister used that data. The data is wrong. We do not recognise that data at Kingston. None of the other universities recognise that data.
I wrote to Charles Farr in September, describing that we thought the data was wrong, but also saying, “We have very clear university guidelines on who speaks, on what they say. We wish to remain compliant with the law while fulfilling our obligation to protect freedom of speech and opinion. If you have information that these guidelines were breached I would be grateful for it, so that we can take action”. Now, if the Home Office was serious I would have expected them to work with us. I have not had any response to that letter.
Q648 Chair: So you completely deny accusations made against your university?
Professor Weinberg: Of those individuals named two of them had spoken at Kingston.
Q649 Chair: What we describe as the hate preachers?
Professor Weinberg: The hate preachers. Underlying this is the question of how they got on to that list of hate speakers, and was it appropriate for them to be on that list, but we can question that. Of those two names recognised who did speak at Kingston—and we do not know who the others are that we were accused of that we could identify—one of them happens to be an academic with an interest on central Africa and was speaking on the subject of the current crisis in the Central African Republic. The other was speaking on a theological subject, on the worldly life and the hereafter. We know that at neither of those events was there any hate speech. We know that at both of those events the full university requirements for compliance, which is that we ask all external speakers to sign up to the university value statement and a whole variety of things, were complied with.
Q650 Chair: So you do not describe them as hate preachers at all?
Professor Weinberg: I do not know what a hate preacher is in the context that it is being used there.
Q651 Chair: It certainly does not meet the criteria that you have set down, because you have described them as academics talking about important matters of international issues.
Professor Weinberg: In that context they were. What they may or may not have said 10 years ago is something for further discussion, I think, and I am happy to discuss that further.
Q652 Chair: Generally speaking, do you think that the Government is right to feel that we should crack down on radicalisation at universities? I know that some people feel that 18 to 21 year-olds should have the ability to be exposed to all kinds of different thoughts, experiences, debates, discussions. I have two children who are in exactly that category of age group, but do you think that they are right to be concerned, not just about Kingston, but generally, that this is an area for radicalisation?
Professor Weinberg: I completely accept that universities have a duty as civic partners and civic citizens to protect their students and society. We have a duty to try to identify where there may be threats. Those threats might be a student with mental health problems; they might be a student who is about to become a terrorist. We do have a duty.
I think there is a general duty, not a specific duty, around Prevent. Prevent is part of that general duty.
Q653 Chair: You are not a fan of Prevent?
Professor Weinberg: I am not a fan, and I am not not a fan. I am a fan of our duty to help develop a stable, resilient society. I think there are parts of Prevent that are counterproductive—
Q654 Chair: Do you think aspects of Prevent are counterproductive?
Professor Weinberg: Yes.
Q655 Chair: Give me one example.
Professor Weinberg: Because one of the roles of universities, as GH Newman said in the 1850s, is through argument, through the clash of ideas, to bring forward truth. If our students, many of whom come from a fairly narrow social background, do not have the opportunity to have their views interrogated, tested, listened to, within the confines of the university, they will merely hear a very narrow section of views elsewhere, for example within the mosque. I think the way Prevent is being interpreted and some of the duties being put on the university have the danger of making that happen.
Chair: Very helpful.
Professor Weinberg: So I think that Charles Farr was completely wrong, which is why I was angry because I think what Kingston is doing is trying to develop that resilience that we all want.
Q656 Chair: You have spoken up very strongly for Kingston, and I am sure your local MP, Mr Berry, will be delighted at that. Megan Dunn, you also in the NUS, as an organisation, are not that happy with Prevent, is that right? Are you a supporter of the process?
Megan Dunn: I think NUS’s concerns with the Prevent strategy is that in many cases it has been counterproductive to its stated aims, and often fed the narrative of marginalisation and ostracising of certain communities, who have been affected by these issues. NUS has been doing a lot of work for a number of years around these issues and when we come back to first principles NUS’s first principles are that of creating a cohesive community on campuses and that some of this work has been counterproductive to those aims.
Q657 Chair: So you think this view that the Government needs to crack down on universities because of the number of hate speakers is wrong?
Megan Dunn: Again, NUS has been working for a long time on these issues and providing advice and guidance to student unions on how to deal with these very day-to-day issues around speakers that are on campus, and providing a duty of care for their students. Student unions are, as I am sure you know, legislated under charity law and regulated by the Charity Commission, so we have a certain set—
Q658 Chair: So you do not mind anyone coming to speak at campuses?
Megan Dunn: No. NUS has, as I am sure you know, a number of elements of advice that we give to student unions and some of that is around external speakers’ guidance and mitigation of risk, which is part of that balance of freedom of speech and freedom from harm laws, and a duty of care to your students, and around the safety of students, as well.
Q659 Mr Jayawardena: Professor Weinberg, you said today that universities were civic partners, yet earlier in the year you stated that the Government was putting universities in an “impossible position by expecting them to ban speakers for extremism without defining extremism in sufficiently clear terms”. What statutory guidance do you believe universities need on this?
Professor Weinberg: I think statutory guidance here is very difficult, especially around the topic of non-violent extremism, which is what I was specifically talking about in that instance.
Q660 Mr Jayawardena: With respect, you said that it was lack of definition, so what definition, what guidance, is necessary to provide you with certainty?
Professor Weinberg: We have the law. We think that is sufficient.
Q661 Mr Jayawardena: So why then is it an impossible position?
Professor Weinberg: Because what the Prevent duty asks us, for example, is to mitigate fully, to reduce radicalisation and non-violent extremism. I do not understand what that is. I want a university full of passion—
Q662 Mr Jayawardena: So surely you want guidance, then?
Professor Weinberg: Yes, but I do not want bad guidance. There is the law, and it is quite clear where the law lies, and the law states what people may or may not say and do, not only within universities but elsewhere. We are compliant with the law, so we have a process that we believe is fully legally compliant, yet I then have a duty placed upon me to fully mitigate non-violent extremists speaking on the university.
Q663 Mr Jayawardena: Perhaps we can turn to just a figure, and it might be nought or it might be something else. Have any speakers been barred from addressing your students since September?
Professor Weinberg: None have been barred, but we have had one speaker who has refused to sign up to our requirements. I would also comment, we had a recent high profile, high risk speaker and that, for example was discussed with our borough counter-terrorism officer, who agreed completely with the steps that were taken and thought that our processes were exemplary.
Q664 Mr Jayawardena: So given that you say it has been commented by third parties that your process is exemplary, why do you believe it is an impossible position?
Professor Weinberg: Because I am concerned about how it might be interpreted in the future.
Q665 Mr Jayawardena: But you do not have a problem right now?
Professor Weinberg: I have a problem because we are endlessly treading this tightrope and we have, unfortunately, people in senior positions within Government ministries accusing us of being derelict of duty, where in fact we are absolutely compliant with the law and, I think, compliant with the spirit of the Prevent resilience programme. Unfortunately cheap political messages can be made.
Q666 Mr Jayawardena: Ms Dunn, do you agree that universities and student unions have a role to play in combating extremism on campus and, if so, what do you believe this role could look like in the future?
Megan Dunn: I think what I will do is turn to some of the work that NUS has done around this area, because as I say it is an area that we have been working on for a number of years. We have worked to ensure that we tackle violent terrorism by ending marginalisation within education, and making universities cohesive and free places to study. We have given practical advice, support and resources that are focused on bringing people together from all backgrounds and all faiths, and promoting cohesion between them.
Q667 Mr Jayawardena: So if I may summarise, your answer to the question is yes, you do agree?
Megan Dunn: I think everyone across society has a duty to work on these issues and that universities and student unions are no different to those, but the issue is around first principles and our first principle is around creating cohesive communities where we bring people in. That is where some of our legitimate concerns around this issue are. I am not entirely sure that the implications of the Prevent duties are of that nature.
Q668 Mr Jayawardena: In that direction of questioning then, over the last few years NUS has made some controversial decisions of its own, including last year when at one point the National Executive refused to officially condemn the so-called Islamic State. Do you regret that?
Megan Dunn: NUS has always condemned violent terrorism and NUS has indeed condemned ISIS.
Q669 Mr Jayawardena: Do you regret that at one point the National Executive refused to take action?
Megan Dunn: What happened is that NUS has a vibrant democratic process and that we have a large amount of policy, and of that policy there were some technicalities in other areas of that policy that were deemed to need to be taken away. So the policy was taken away, brought back with amendments on certain other issues, but that line remained that NUS expresses solidarity with the Kurdish people in the region, that we condemn ISIS and the atrocities that it commits.
Q670 Mr Jayawardena: Will the NUS be able to co-operate now with the Government when it comes to countering extremism on campuses, given the discussions that are happening here in Parliament and the decisions that may be made tomorrow?
Megan Dunn: Sorry, can you repeat the question?
Mr Jayawardena: Given the difficulty that NUS has had reconciling its own vibrant, democratic discussions to reach a decision that I now support, which is that you have condemned the so-called Islamic State, do you believe that NUS will be able to co-operate with the Government when it comes to countering extremism on the campuses?
Megan Dunn: NUS will be able to work with the Government to create cohesive communities on campus.
Q671 Mr Jayawardena: But countering extremism?
Megan Dunn: In that vein, yes.
Q672 Mr Winnick: Professor Weinberg, as far as hate preachers are concerned, should there be any difficulty in identifying them?
Professor Weinberg: I think there is a lot of difficulty in identifying them. For example, one of those on the list of hate preachers is someone who may have said something that was homophobic 10 years ago, denies that they said it, and within the context it is difficult to know exactly what they did say. People do get on lists and people do change their minds. There are people within high positions in British political life who some years ago were prescribed individuals. They are now allowed to speak publicly. The lists are very difficult. What is a hate preacher? There is no formal list. Relying on a list that ultimately comes from a political advocacy group I think makes, going back to Mr Jayawardena’s question, our life very difficult.
Q673 Mr Winnick: If you take for example—he was extradited at long last to the United States—Abu Hamza, any difficulty in identifying him as a hate preacher?
Professor Weinberg: If he was extradited under the terms of the law, whether one wants to use a jargon phrase like “hate preacher” I do not know that that is very helpful. If people break the law, if people say things that are against the law, then absolutely they should be dealt with within the law. If people are not breaking the law then I think it makes life very much more difficult. We do have a democratic society and I have a statutory duty to support freedom of speech, and there are some people who will hold legal views that I find reprehensible. Part of my duty as a vice-chancellor is to support a plurality of views within the university. I do not think the phrase “hate preacher” is a helpful one. There is the law.
Q674 Mr Winnick: I am rather surprised, because you would know about the campaign against racism in this country, so if a home-grown fascist of the National Front BNP spouts anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim—particularly it would nowadays be more anti-Muslim than anti-Semitism—and earlier on stated that whites should be the dominant race and the rest of it, Nazi-type propaganda, would that not come in the category of hate?
Professor Weinberg: I would find it reprehensible. If they said things, if they suggested violence, then, of course, they are breaking the law. I think you will remember that when a senior politician within the BNP went on “Question Time” it was the fact that they went on “Question Time” that revealed how inadequate they were and that was what led to their political demise. It was the questioning of Bonnie Greer, the Chancellor of Kingston University, that led to that. I think that the evidence out there is that if there are views that you hold reprehensible what you should do is encourage showing how stupid they are, not pushing them out, marginalising them, where they are only heard and never challenged.
Q675 Mr Winnick: If we had listened to that, if I may say so, Professor, the Government of the time would not have introduced and made sure that anti-racist legislation was carried, but be that as it may. What about the NUS? Do you take this policy of not really understanding or identifying hate speakers, Ms Dunn?
Megan Dunn: NUS support student unions in what is the practical application and assessment of mitigating risk to protect free speech and what is a difficult balance between balancing personal freedom and expression and freedom from harm. Sometimes our tools are controversial, but we believe that they balance competing pressures and the vast majority of the time ensure that students are kept safe and free from harm.
Q676 Mr Winnick: If I can ask one more question, if someone comes along and speaks denouncing Jews or Christians, as the case may be, everyone apart from Muslims, or denouncing a particular different type of Muslim, Shias, for example, who they consider to be also subhuman, you would be perfectly happy on the basis it is a free expression of opinion?
Megan Dunn: NUS has a couple of tools that we advise student unions with and we have been using for a number of years. We have a no platform policy as NUS, which we have had for 30 years now. This is a way of mitigating risk for external speakers that are known risks, centred on known organisations. They are an incredibly small list of organisations, but they are about ensuring that organisations who stand apart from us, who do not practise freedom of speech or do not value freedom of speech and engage in hate speech and the incitement of violence and hatred, are not permitted to speak at our events.
Q677 Tim Loughton: Vice-Chancellor, I am hearing a robust challenge to terms such as “hate preacher”. I am hearing your statutory duty to promote and defend free speech I think we would all agree with. I am hearing about the intellectual challenge through the clash of ideas, as you cited, from the 19th century. What I am not hearing from you is how you articulate your responsibility to perform the Prevent duty, as it is now, and producing a counter-narrative to extremist ideas in a university context. We have had a lot of why you should not but I want to hear a bit more about why you should and how you should.
Professor Weinberg: Absolutely, and thank you for that. It gives me an opportunity to maybe expand on my answer to Mr Winnick. There are, of course, speakers that we would not wish to have on the university but it is very difficult. This is the slippery slope argument and it is where you draw the line. Wherever you draw the line to some extent becomes rather arbitrary, so I would tend to refer to the law.
I think we also do need to build the counter-narrative. One of the things we try to do within the university is we have a very clear set of value statements and we work very openly on that. We were one of only eight UK universities, for example, to achieve Race Equality Charter Mark because we are working very closely in those areas. We are a university where 50% of the students come from minority and ethnic backgrounds, not a phrase I like, particularly in London where we are all minority ethnic. We also need to encourage our students to go and challenge. There are a variety of steps we are taking within the university to work very closely with our student union to encourage students who have a different set of views to go along and feel comfortable in the environments so they might challenge. I am very proud of my students, including my Islamic society, who have enabled that. We have had speakers there and challenging discussions about issues of the sort you should have in universities.
Q678 Tim Loughton: But how is that a counter-narrative? It is promoting free speech. How is it promoting a counter-narrative where you have a duty under Prevent to encourage and promote?
Professor Weinberg: A narrative is about the discussion. There is another sort of counter-narrative in which we are engaged, for example, with Project Argus, which is initially a City of London counter-terrorism programme that my senior team have all taken part in. There is Project Griffin, which is an extension of that programme into other parts of the university, which is broadly about educating large numbers of university staff to be aware where there might be problems, just basically to be much more agile to noticing issues that might be a threat.
Q679 Tim Loughton: Okay. Do you see my concern that this is slightly passive and talking about a Race Equality Charter Mark, which is exceedingly laudable, is not about a robust counter-narrative to counter some of the very poisonous, very extreme ideas that are going round and which are giving rise in some cases to highly intelligent students from universities disappearing off and joining Syria? We can have a counter-narrative. We have talked about it with representatives from Muslim groups and from mosques and within schools, but within a university context it needs to be on an altogether more robust intellectual plane. Just talking about having a robust discussion does not really tick the box, does it?
Professor Weinberg: I do not think we are at all passive. We are a university. We have a curriculum. Within our curricula we draw from a wide variety of narratives. If by a counter-narrative you are suggesting that whenever the Islamic society have a meeting we then have to organise the Jewish society, the Catholic society, the Muslim society, and so on, to have meetings, that strikes me as a nonsense.
Tim Loughton: No, that is balance.
Professor Weinberg: I am afraid I do not understand what you mean by counter-narrative then.
Q680 Tim Loughton: That is why I contrast it with passive. There is a huge effort through social media and through hate preaching, which is a term you do not necessarily recognise, at home and overseas. Counter-narrative means using new, it means using inclusive and extensive forms of communication and intellectual challenge where positively you are doing your bit, along with all other institutions covered by the Prevent strategy, to say, “Look, don’t be drawn in by this poison. There is another way”. It can be a positive thing. It does not just need to be countering and balancing.
Professor Weinberg: I think we are doing that at all times. As I say, we have a very strong university values statement, which we share with our students. We work very closely with our student union. It is embedded in our curricula. Where we have had narratives particularly around sexism in the university we have worked very actively on social media to counter those. We do work around the Prevent agenda as well. We have the local police force come to visit the university. They talk about it. They are present at our freshers’ fair. We have a very close relationship with the borough commander. I think we do have a range of activities.
Q681 Tim Loughton: With respect, Vice-Chancellor, do you see why I use the term “passive”? When you refer now, having done with your Race Equality Charter Mark, to your values statement, something that, no doubt, you have had for many years before Prevent was ever conceived of, this is not proactive, positive stuff, which is what the Prevent duty is really asking for as a counter-narrative. Can I ask the NUS whether you are being more proactive and how we have a counter-narrative that is applicable to students at the university level rather than at the school level?
Megan Dunn: Again, as I have already said and I am sure you are already bored of hearing, the NUS has been working on this area for a number of years and, indeed, have been doing faith and belief work since 2011. We have approached again this issue from first principles of a cohesive society and dialogue and that we need to tackle marginalisation. We have done interfaith projects with student unions such as Kingston and have, in fact, worked on specific projects with Kingston students’ union, who again in turn work very closely with their institution around building that cohesive community. We have given grants and supported student unions with projects to begin dialogue on campus. We have produced resources and materials that have created work to bring groups of different faiths together and, in particular, promotion of dialogue and understanding such as the interrelation between faith and LGBT issues and faith and women and how we understand and act on the needs of a student of faith on campus. We have done particular work on supporting Muslim women’s leadership and guidance and training as well.
Q682 Tim Loughton: Okay. There is a good list of stuff there, but why—final question—do you think that a student, be it at Kingston University, be it at Cambridge University, who is highly intelligent, goes off to Syria and joins the ISIL terrorists, as we now know them? Why on earth is a student, whose intellectual grasp hopefully is rather greater than other people who do not have that capacity, being driven to do this, in your view?
Megan Dunn: Look, I am not an expert in counter-terror or in that area, but my obligation and the student unions’ obligation is to keep students safe. That involves all students and bringing students into a cohesive community and a campus community that brings people in instead of further marginalising people and pushing them away.
Q683 Tim Loughton: Okay, but you are much closer to being a student and are a student than I am in ancient history. Why on earth would somebody that you have gone to university with, from a similar background, from a similar intellectual level, be driven to go to Syria?
Megan Dunn: That is not a question that I have an answer to.
Chair: Professor Weinberg, do you want to offer a quick answer?
Professor Weinberg: I sort of understand what you are asking. There is no good evidence that young people are radicalised at university. I am an epidemiologist by training. The only data that we have is that possibly 30% of those who were tried for terrorist offences had had a relationship with a university. That is lower than the percentage one would expect from the representation at university. That fundamental narrative about radicalisation at university is probably flawed. That does not, however, stop me worrying about those few that might be. I think it is a very good question. We do not know the answer to it, I am happy to concede that.
Chair: Thank you, Mr Loughton. Now you have to have a question from your local MP, Mr Berry.
Q684 James Berry: I want to ask Ms Dunn a question first, if I may. You have a policy of no platform and, as I understand it, you have no problem banning or criticising universities for hosting far-right speakers of the type that Mr Winnick referred to. You have no problem with banning or criticising universities for giving a platform to homophobic speakers. In fact, I think you were calling for Germaine Greer to be banned from speaking to a university because of comments she made about transgendered people, comments which I entirely disagree with. Is there any reason why entirely the same approach should not be applied to extremist Islamist speakers?
Megan Dunn: First, just to clarify the relationship between students, student unions and NUS—because I understand that unless you live in my world that is not a particularly straightforward relationship—NUS is a confederation of over 600 student unions across the UK who are all completely independent organisations of NUS. In the case of Germaine Greer, that was not a case in which NUS was vocal as an organisation. In terms of no platform and understanding who we no platform, we have a list of five organisations that are currently on our no platform list.
Q685 James Berry: Who are they?
Megan Dunn: I have the list here. They are Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Muslim Public Affairs Committee, AM, the BNP and the EDL.
Q686 James Berry: Very good, okay, fine. Thank you. Professor Weinberg, I understand your commitment as an academic to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but have you ever yourself taken steps to close an event down in spite of those commitments?
Professor Weinberg: You have probably been reading my previous history. When I was acting Vice-Chancellor at City University I closed a Muslim prayer room for two reasons. One was security in that the prayer room was at the edge of the campus and we could not really assure the security of the students going in and out of it. There had been some events with a local estate. The second one was that the prayer room was being run in a way where it had been taken over by a group of extremists who, for example, were not allowing other Muslims—Ismailis, Ahmadis—to pray there because they did not think they were proper Muslims. I closed the prayer room down and I thought a secular university should not privilege one religion. I opened a multi-faith environment. That led to 200 people praying outside the university and the involvement of the East London mosque. I think I am being consistent here because, again, my principle is about challenge, about openness, about allowing ideas to flourish rather than about closed environments.
Q687 James Berry: We have heard that speakers on the whole should not be banned because they should be subjected to debate, sunlight is the best disinfectant, but we also hear about closed groups inviting speakers to closed or very self-selecting events where there is no debate or challenge. It is not like an extremist speaker—or a term you are comfortable with—is invited to the Kingston University debating society where their views are picked apart and questions are asked. These are quite self-selecting events. Do you think it is incumbent on universities to ensure that there is an actual counter-narrative present at an event where there is a speaker about whom there is a concern?
Professor Weinberg: Ideally, yes. That is difficult to enforce. What we can enforce is we do not allow those closed events. Our principles are that if it is a university event it is about education; therefore, it should be in English; it should be open to all; the speaker has to be willing to take questions; there can be no gender segregation. Those are the principles of any meeting at the university.
James Berry: They have to sign up to that before?
Professor Weinberg: They have to sign up to that, otherwise they are not allowed to speak. If we have a high-risk speaker we investigate them and, of course, we do not have extant resources for that. We work closely with our borough commander around those issues. There is a difficulty there because, obviously, it might be threatening for, say, someone from an LGBT society to go to a meeting that is primarily Islamic and challenge the views. That is where I think the importance of the counter-narrative is that we have to build up the culture of the university so that is an accepted part of the way we are working. I am proud of our students because I think that is developing.
Q688 James Berry: Finally, the issue with identifying hate speakers, as Mr Winnick was taking you to task on, do you think it would be helpful if the Government produced a list of these so-called hate speakers, or who the Government considers to be hate speakers, so that you would at least know if these speakers were being invited on to campuses you would remain on the kind of list that you are unfortunately on at the moment? Then if you disagreed, of course, and did not think they were hate speakers, that would be one thing, but at least you would know where you stood.
Professor Weinberg: Openness and clarity is always of benefit as long as it was an obvious system as to how someone got on that list and how they could challenge the list and get themselves off it. The problem we have at the moment is the covert criticism for allowing someone and we do not know why.
Q689 James Berry: Finally, in Kingston, are you confident that your relationship with the local council and the local police is one that promotes a free, fair but safe debate among your students?
Professor Weinberg: We work very hard at it. I meet regularly with the borough commander. I meet with the head of the council. My head of legal services has a direct line to the counter-terrorism officer and, as I mentioned before, we will discuss it if we are anxious and describe what we have done. We have on one occasion that I know of disagreed with the police when they said we would rather you did not have someone and we were not quite clear why they said that. They said they were not sure if we could ensure security on campus. They did not say they really did not want this individual. They were concerned about security on campus. We enabled the security on campus, we had the meeting, and it went fantastically.
Q690 Chair: Let us be clear, Professor Weinberg. In answer to Mr Berry you are telling this Committee as part of this inquiry you would like to see the publication by the Government of a list of individuals who would be individuals they would regard as being unsuitable to appear at universities? You seem to ask for more clarity but are you saying you would like a list?
Professor Weinberg: I do not like making policy on the hoof so I would like more clarity. That might be an option and I think it would be worthy of consideration.
Chair: Okay. I just thought I would get you to clarify that because I know that you are very strong on these matters.
Q691 Naz Shah: Megan, you have warned of a lack of clarity in the Government’s anti-radicalisation plans, in particular staff being forced to monitor students under vague guidelines that damage academic relationships and the education system as a whole. What is your assessment of the Prevent duty?
Megan Dunn: I guess I think that you are right, we have touched on the broad and often vague definitions used within the strategy, so vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy. After the last general election, Russell Brand stood up and said that he felt that people should not vote. Is that a fundamental disregard for British values? Who defines what fundamental British values are? As such, there are no clear definitions of those things. These are not necessarily violent or extremist in intent or direction in that some of this is a matter of judgment and an awful lot has been left up to judgment. Student unions and NUS have been dealing with these issues day to day for a number of years.
Around the surveillance, I think we have real concerns that staff are expected to monitor students and that when we talk about first principles of building cohesive campuses that involves a level of trust. What we have heard from students is that this breaks down trust. They may be less likely to seek help for problems and that directly feeds the suggestion that Prevent alienates communities.
In terms of academic freedom, the burden of the stipulation—that risk of being drawn into terrorism—has to be completely mitigated. While we are all working towards that aim, how can that possibly be proven? We have seen specific concerns, particularly to me from black and Muslim students, that they feel that they are more likely to be referred, and concerns around racial profiling, and that trust in the Prevent strategy more generally is broken due to these issues. There are some specific examples around that as well.
Q692 Mr Umunna: Megan, on your executive council and, of course, the 31 members I think there are?
Megan Dunn: I think there are more like 42.
Mr Umunna: Right, so how come there are 31 on the website? I have just counted them.
Megan Dunn: Because they come from different areas and are elected at different places, so they would be the officers that are elected at our national conference, but there are officers elected in different conferences as well.
Q693 Mr Umunna: In terms of the 31 national officers, would that be the right way—
Megan Dunn: They are national executive councillors.
Mr Umunna: Your national executive council, how many of those are of a black or minority ethnic background?
Megan Dunn: I have not counted, although I know that it is a significant proportion. We have been doing a lot of work on the diversity of our organisation over the last few years.
Mr Umunna: Other than the black students’ officer, I can only really identify two, so it would be quite useful if you could write back to the Committee in terms of the national—
Megan Dunn: There are a significant portion more than that as well. Those that sit on the national executive council, yes, absolutely.
Chair: We are missing what you are saying. If you let him put his question, then you can come back.
Megan Dunn: Sorry.
Q694 Mr Umunna: I think you were just saying you are right about the figures. I take your point that there are regional officers as well, but let’s stay national here. On the national executive council how many Muslim members of that are there?
Megan Dunn: Off the top of my head at least four, but that is me doing a round check in my head. I will get the numbers back to you.
Q695 Mr Umunna: That would be good. The senior leadership team who support your work, how many of them are drawn from a black and minority ethnic background?
Megan Dunn: There are 19 elected full-time officers, so again if—
Mr Umunna: I am talking about the staff that support the work you do, not the elected officers, your senior leadership team I think you call them.
Megan Dunn: Again, can I get back to you on that?
Q696 Mr Umunna: I would be very interested just to get those figures. Obviously, what I am getting at here is you are an organisation of long standing, done lots of great work, but we have a growing BME community and it would be interesting to see the extent to which you reflect that. In many respects, I think people might expect you to reflect that better than other organisations because of the age demographic.
Professor, going back to some of the questioning that was just posed to Megan, can I ask you about your duties and what you do under the Prevent duty and to identify students who may be at risk or are being radicalised? Going back to first base on that, what is your view on the role of university staff in identifying young people who are either being radicalised or at risk of radicalisation? Do you think that is the proper role of somebody who is supposed to be teaching to be also identifying those things, too?
Professor Weinberg: I reflect back on what I think I said at the beginning. We have a duty of care to students and to society and I think we all have a duty of care as citizens to try to identify those who might be a risk to themselves or a risk to others. It is accepted within universities, for example, that we would have a duty to try to identify a young person who is having mental health problems. We are talking about demographics here. Young people have mental health problems. Young people become radicalised. It is a cohort where these sorts of things will happen. Academic staff and non-academic staff fully accept their responsibility, as I say, around mental health. I do not think that this is in many ways very different but because of the politicisation of the activity many academic staff deeply resent that they are being asked, for example, to act as police. They see Prevent as being a policing strategy.
Q697 Mr Umunna: Do you think it is reasonable for them to play a part, albeit you approach it from the angle of duty of care?
Professor Weinberg: I do think it reasonable and that is why as a university we have become engaged with things like Project Argus and we are looking at Project Griffin because we do have a duty of care to students and society generally. Our staff do need to be aware and be alert to what might be signals that they should be aware of and know what to do about it. I do not think that I want my staff to become adjuncts to the security services.
Q698 Mr Umunna: Can I ask you about one specific area that we have taken some evidence on? We did so last week from the Security Minister and his Cabinet Office lead. Obviously, there is an ongoing discussion in respect of legislation going through Parliament and the extent to which security and police services can look into what we do online. Obviously, the online luring of young people to go over and travel to Syria, for example, is a big issue that we are talking about this week. What are you doing in your university around information technology and how your students are using it? Do you think you have a role to be aware of what sites they are visiting and so on? Where do you draw the line on this stuff?
Professor Weinberg: Again, this is difficult because students might legitimately be looking at certain sites, for example, if they are doing research into counter-terrorism. I, for example, had the responsibility when I was at City University, where we had an academic group that was interested in pornography, in deciding which sites they could look at. We do have a role and universities do actively monitor what is going on in terms of our legal responsibilities to ensure, but again there are—
Q699 Mr Umunna: Just on that point, how do you do that?
Professor Weinberg: There are technologies.
Q700 Mr Umunna: Right, so do you, for example, monitor what sites are visited and can you legitimately do that?
Professor Weinberg: I would need to get technical detail from my head of information services, but certainly occasionally—and this is largely around people looking at pornography rather than looking at something political—it will come to light that someone is using the university network in a way we would rather they did not.
Q701 Victoria Atkins: Professor Weinberg, can I just confirm are any meetings at Kingston University segregated along gender lines?
Professor Weinberg: Only if they are for worship. If any other meeting is segregated, that would be in contravention of our university policy and we would take action.
Q702 Victoria Atkins: Do your staff monitor the meetings to make sure that does not happen?
Professor Weinberg: When we have meetings that we consider medium or high risk, either the university union staff or university security staff will attend, yes. That is why I can be confident in knowing that we have not had any hate speech in the university.
Q703 Victoria Atkins: The Government states that provisions for academic freedom are part of the Prevent guidance for university and colleges. Do you think these protections are adequate?
Professor Weinberg: We will not know until they are tested. That is why I made the comment earlier on about we are in a difficult position because there are two competing requirements here. There is the requirement for freedom of speech and there is the requirement that could be interpreted as saying we should not allow certain people to speak. That will ultimately have to be either clarified or tested.
Q704 Victoria Atkins: Just going back to the public meeting, if someone who is high risk, as you have described them, comes along and speaks on a platform, they are speaking in English, is that correct?
Professor Weinberg: Yes.
Q705 Victoria Atkins: Is there any provision by which an alternative view has to be put forward or should be put forward or do they just have the platform to themselves?
Professor Weinberg: They have the platform to themselves. I think it is very difficult. If you happen to have a group of active Muslims who want to have meetings and want to talk about something and then there is a group of other students who are fundamentally apathetic and never arrange their own meetings, I do not think they should have a sense of veto but they can come to those meetings and ask questions. I do not think you can enforce balance on the platform at every meeting; I am not sure what that would mean. But we do as part of our requirements insist that speakers have to take questions.
Q706 Victoria Atkins: Is there any form of monitoring how many speakers you have of a particular high-risk viewpoint? It does not have to be related to religion. You have mentioned BNP. Would you have any system of monitoring to make sure that there are not too many far-right organisations?
Professor Weinberg: We have a very, very good relationship with our student union. The student union will let us know of any speaker and if they consider they are categorised into low, medium or high risk. We have a triage system. If they are considered high risk, they go to the head of my legal services. She will take a view. If she is unclear, she might talk with the borough counter-terrorism officer or with my deputy, who is very experienced, or with me. We have a pretty clear triage system so we do know who is speaking, what they are speaking about and what action that we have taken.
Q707 Victoria Atkins: The number of times that people of a particular persuasion have spoken, is there any way of saying, “Gosh, there have been 10 speakers of the far-right in the last year”? I am using a deliberately—
Professor Weinberg: We would have that data. As it is, most of this activity at the moment is around issues of Islam, but it could be in future time around issues of abortion or issues of some other policy. Yes, we have that data. It does not cause me any concern at the moment that it is particularly one issue. Of those people who have refused to sign to our requirements for speaking, the only time it has happened was a speaker from UKIP.
Q708 Chair: Okay. Well, we won’t go there. In respect of your robust action taken at your previous academic institution in closing down the prayer room for the reasons that you gave us, you mentioned the university Islamic societies. At least four individuals previously involved in terrorism in the United Kingdom were senior members of a university Islamic society. I am not saying they were at Kingston. Kafeel Ahmed, the Glasgow Airport activity; Waseem Mughal, who was inciting terrorist murder on the internet; Yassin Nassari, who was in possession of bomb-making guides; and Waheed Zaman, who plotted suicide bomb attacks, they were all senior members of Islamic societies at various universities. Do you attend the meetings of the Islamic society? Have you been to any where you can participate or observe what is happening there?
Professor Weinberg: I have not attended meetings of the Islamic society at Kingston. I have had discussions with the leaders of the Islamic society. I certainly had many discussions with the leaders of the Islamic society when I was at City University. These are passionate young people. One would hope that young people are passionate about issues. Some of the issues I would deeply disagree with and I would have robust discussions with them. I encourage my academic staff now to engage with the Islamic society and with other societies, some of whom have interesting ideas.
Q709 Chair: Since you have not been to one, if you suddenly start attending, especially after you have given evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on this subject, people might be quite shocked if the Vice-Chancellor suddenly turned up at one of the local society meetings.
Professor Weinberg: I don’t know that they would be, actually, because I do attend quite a lot of student do’s and I am quite present around the university. They probably would not know who I was, to be truthful.
Q710 Chair: I cannot believe that. They probably have masks of you, Vice-Chancellor, as they have at other universities. Megan Dunn, the NUS passed a motion saying they were going to oppose Prevent. Indeed, it said it would campaign against the Government’s counter-extremism Prevent strategy and then allied itself with CAGE, an organisation that has given evidence to this Committee. The Prime Minister then condemned you—not you personally but the organisation—and you accused the Prime Minister of grandstanding because of his criticism. Then you ruled out working with CAGE. He was right, wasn’t he?
Megan Dunn: I am really grateful for the opportunity to clarify this again because I think there have been numerous misrepresentations. NUS does not work with CAGE. NUS had stated that it did not work with CAGE before the Prime Minister’s comments and we have since consistently laid out that statement.
Chair: But the motion still stands?
Megan Dunn: In terms of the opposition to Prevent, as I have stated, I think that NUS has legitimate concerns about Prevent, again because we tackle these issues from a stance of tackling marginalisation and that first principle again of creating cohesive campuses. The representations that I have received that say that the Prevent strategy and brand is so tarnished that it breaks down trust within those communities and, therefore, is counterproductive to that aim means that we do not—
Chair: Yes, you have made that very clear to us. I think we have that message very clearly. We are nearly at the end. We have three quick questions from Mr Jayawardena, Mr Winnick and Mr Berry.
Q711 Mr Jayawardena: I am slightly troubled by something that Ms Dunn said, so perhaps she will be able to clarify this. You are against Prevent and yet you want to co-operate with the Government to counter extremism. Perhaps I could get a clarification on two quick points. First, do you acknowledge that the radicalisation of young people is an issue that society as a whole must remedy, yes or no?
Megan Dunn: Yes.
Q712 Mr Jayawardena: Why then does the NUS not support—or do you—the principle of training university staff to recognise and respond to the signs of radicalisation among students?
Megan Dunn: I think the concerns have come from issues that we have talked about from black and Muslim students around the issues of racial profiling and the feeling that they are more likely to be referred. Again, this issue of—
Q713 Mr Jayawardena: In the interests of time, do you or do you not support the principle of training university staff to recognise and respond to the signs of radicalisation among students?
Megan Dunn: We have created, in fact, briefings on isolation and vulnerability to use to train student unions.
Mr Jayawardena: No, this is about university staff. Do you support, yes or no, the principle of training university staff to recognise and respond to the signs of radicalisation among students?
Megan Dunn: Again, going back to that first principle of creating cohesive communities and how we bring people into those communities—
Mr Jayawardena: It is a yes then?
Megan Dunn: —then there should be training for university staff on how to create those communities.
Chair: Thank you. Mr Jayawardena is looking for a one-word answer. What is that one word that we are looking for? A yes or a no?
Megan Dunn: I believe I have answered the question in the last—
Mr Jayawardena: It is a yes, is it?
Megan Dunn: Some questions cannot have one-word answers and I believe that I have fully answered the question in the last questioning around what it is that we are training staff to do and creating those cohesive communities.
Chair: You are obviously in training for ministerial office.
Megan Dunn: I desperately hope not.
Chair: Okay. We will let Mr Winnick try.
Q714 Mr Winnick: Just a couple of questions. On meetings, NUS policy, Ms Dunn, gender segregation, is that allowed?
Megan Dunn: As far as I am aware, we have not had any gender segregation at meetings and NUS events that I have been present at.
Q715 Mr Winnick: If Jewish or Muslim fundamentalists say they simply cannot speak to a mixed gender gathering, the position is quite clear, is it?
Megan Dunn: In terms of student unions, who are the ones that are dealing with these issues day to day, student unions are governed by charity laws and regulated by the Charity Commission. As we know, there are laws around gender segregation and when that is and is not permitted under the law. That is only permitted under the law if students feel no either explicit or implicit pressure to conform to gender segregation, so those are the conditions under which that would be allowed in student unions.
Q716 Mr Winnick: Professor Weinberg—and we ask much tougher questions of Ministers, I can assure you—in the recognised threat from terrorism and the rest, which you obviously recognise, do you think that academic freedom and freedom of speech, which is so precious to us, is really under threat?
Professor Weinberg: I think it is under threat from self-censorship because people are concerned about what they might say. I think it is under threat because people are concerned about consequences. For example, universities are banning speakers who I think they should not. That means that freedom of speech and expression and exchange of ideas is under threat. Similarly, individuals, for example, feel threatened if they happen to wear t-shirts with particular pictures on them and have been banned by universities. I think freedom of expression is under threat, yes, and we do need to attend very carefully to that.
Q717 James Berry: Ms Dunn, why wouldn’t you work with CAGE?
Megan Dunn: We do not work with CAGE because, as far as I am concerned, CAGE do not reflect our values.
Q718 James Berry: The Prevent duty, as I understand it you do not object to the concept but it is how it has been implemented. Would you accept that there have been examples of good practice and examples of poor practice in how the Prevent duty has been implemented at universities?
Megan Dunn: I think there have been cases where they have been taken as issues around the safety of students and that is how student unions and NUS approached the work in this area. There are also specific examples of poor practice, yes.
Q719 Chair: Professor Weinberg, yesterday HEFCE published a report that set out a framework for universities to deal with the Prevent strategy. I am not suggesting you should have read every word of it, but give us your initial view. Is this something that you think is acceptable given your particular position on Prevent?
Professor Weinberg: It is broadly acceptable and we will find most of this fairly easy to comply with because it is—
Chair: You could do an action plan?
Professor Weinberg: We have one. There are two things that concern me, one of which is that there will be additional resource requirements to fulfil another regulatory requirement, and the other one, as I think both Megan and I have mentioned, is the phrase, “External speakers or events should not go ahead if risks cannot be fully mitigated”. First, it is bad English because you cannot mitigate fully, you can only mitigate.
Chair: But it is HEFCE.
Professor Weinberg: Well. Secondly, again, until it is tested what does that mean? Because the only way I think you can fully mitigate is by not having and that is the threat if that is how that is interpreted.
Q720 Chair: You have given very clear evidence to us today, very robust evidence. Universities are somehow separate from the rest of society in this sense because of the role that they play, but you do not really want Government interfering in the way in which you run things. There may well be a counter-terrorism and extremism strategy but this is an opportunity for young people to be able to challenge ideas. You are very robust in defence of academic freedom.
Professor Weinberg: Sorry, I disagree with that. I do not think that universities are apart from society. Society needs safe places where ideas can be challenged robustly and that has historically always been one of the important roles of the university. If we lose that, as a society we are less likely to deliver that resilient, cohesive society that I think we all want to deliver and that will fulfil the outcomes that Prevent wants.
Q721 Chair: The reports that Jo Johnson, the Universities Minister, has written to universities to say if you do not crack down on radicalism you will face legal sanctions—have you received Jo Johnson’s letter?
Professor Weinberg: I have and my concern with this is not the intent—
Chair: Have you replied to him?
Professor Weinberg: I will be replying, yes, as part of the consultation.
Q722 Chair: Give us a flavour of what you might say in that letter.
Professor Weinberg: I think you know perfectly well what I will say. Universities have a duty and a responsibility as members of society, but if we want to build a resilient society the best way to challenge these ideas is through other ideas, through better ideas. If we silence them, what will happen is those ideas will be heard in places where there is no challenge. That is the most sure way of radicalising young people.
Chair: Ms Dunn, Professor Weinberg, thank you very much for giving evidence today.
Megan Dunn: Thank you very much.
Chair: Again, my apologies that you were delayed because of the votes, but we are most grateful. If you have any further information you would like to write to us about, especially on the counter-radicalism agenda, please do so. Thank you.
Oral evidence: Countering extremism, HC 428 20