MCB Briefing on the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill

The Muslim Council of Britain believes that the Counter Terrorism and Security Bill, as it currently stands, runs the risk of at best being ineffective in its aim of keeping our nation safe, and at worst counter-productive.

In line with a number of civil liberty and community organisations, the MCB has expressed its deep concern that the Bill involves a perceptible expansion of the government’s powers at the expense of significant erosion of individual’s civil rights in Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill (confiscation of passports of those suspected to commit terrorist activities, banning return of British citizens where there is a reasonable suspicion of a risk, reintroducing compulsory internal relocation of terrorism suspects).

The Muslim Council of Britain supports other organisations who have highlighted the many weaknesses in this Bill. For its part, the MCB has opted to focus on those parts of the Bill where our voice will be heard and where beneficial changes may be possible. This we hope, will be effective in those areas that affect our communities the most. These include: safeguards on Prevent and safeguards against discrimination in the application of the law (see below for list of recommendations).

The work to date includes:

Responding to the Home Office’s consultation
Engaging with a Conservative MP, requesting the Home Office’s response to our set of recommendations
Lobbying in the House of Lords, prioritising engagement with key decision makers and interested peers who may be sympathetic to our proposals.

There has been limited success in our lobbying at the House of Lords:

We have had meetings and phone calls with the lead Peers on this Bill across all three main parties, as well as a number of other key Lords
Our briefing documents and ideas have been read by the key decision makers within the Lords across all the three main parties, and the idea of considering the unintended “impact on communities”, “safeguarding against discrimination”, “viewing Muslims through the lens of counter terrorism” has gained significant traction in the Lords (see Hansard discussions e.g. Committee Stage and Report Stage)
Baroness Smith (Lead peer for the Labour Party in the Lords on this Bill) introduced an amendment 118J at the Committee Stage in line with one of our recommendations (see here)
Baroness Hamwee (Lead peer for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords on this Bill) introduced an amendment 13B at the Report Stage following one of our recommendations (see here)
Lord Bates (Leed peer for the Government on this Bill) has introduced an amendment 14E at the Report Stage which has been incorporated into the Bill (see here)

We continue to engage with the Lords to work on how to ensure the remainder of our suggested amendments and recommendations are incorporated into the final Bill and its subsequent guidelines, and will update this page with our progress.

Summary of recommendations and progress to-date

Recommendation	Initial expectation of success	Update
1. Consider the impact on communities when developing legislation, as part of the Terms of Reference for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board[the Independent Reviewer will oversee this Board as a result of the discussions in the Lords; we have therefore requested that the impact on communities is part of his terms of reference as well]	Low	Both Labour and the Lib Dems have introduced amendments in line with this recommendation in the Lords (118J in the Committee stage; 13B at the Report stage) The Independent Reviewer believes this recommendation is worth including, according to a discussion with one of the Lords who discussed this directly with him The Government seems to be considering this as an option but has not introduced anything at this stage (but may do so at a later stage e.g. guidelines)
2. Remove the statutory requirement of the Prevent strategy from the Bill. If this is not possible, then at the minimum, we recommend:	Low (for universities)Extremely low (for all other statutory bodies)	For universities, there has been some movement reiterating that universities still retain freedom of expression (Amendment 15D in the Report Stage) but this does not make the Prevent duty subject to the freedom of speech duty. See Lord Bates at the Report Stage.
This part of the Bill should not be fast-tracked given there is no immediate threat that would justify a fast-track	Very Low	No progress made
There should be a review of the effectiveness of Prevent and its underlying premise prior to statutory formalisation	Very Low	No progress made
Safeguards should be provided to limit the power of the Secretary of State	Low	A safeguard has been introduced as amendment 14E at the Report Stage that drafts of regulations must go to and be approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament
3. Introduce safeguards in the guidelines to ensure that Muslims are not treated differently to those of others or no faith	Low	Discussions seem to acknowledge the importance of this, but likely to come at a later stage when draft guidelines are brought forward for discussion.

Further details on the rationale underlying these recommendations can be found within the briefings provided to the Lords and the Home Office as part of the Consultation period.

MCB Briefing on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board

MCB Briefing on safeguards required to prevent discriminatory application of the Bill

MCB Briefing on introducing Prevent as a statutory duty for all public bodies

For a fuller picture of the MCB positioning on the CT bill, including a high-level view of an alternative, see the following link: