Terrorism ‘will be here for some time’
Anti-terrorism legislation is not having a “fundamentally detrimental” effect on civil liberties in Britain, Tony Blair insisted today.
The prime minister said the impact new police powers and new terrorism offences would have on people’s freedoms was sometimes “exaggerated”, given the parliamentary and judicial checks that existed.
But he stressed that such measures had be taken to protect people from a “fundamentally different” type of terrorism, where the perpetrators would “kill as many people as they can”.
However, pressed on how long these measures would have to be in place, Mr Blair admitted that terrorism “was going to be with us for some time” and consequently these measures could not be seen as temporary.
“I can’t tell how long this threat is going to last – the roots are very deep, based on a perversion of Islam that goes back decades and is going to take a long time. In the meantime, we have to take measures compatible with our civil liberties to deal with that,” he said.
Mr Blair was facing a grilling by senior MPs in the Commons liaison committee, where he was called on to explain his policies on everything from health and education to terrorism and the war in Iraq.
The prime minister was questioned about how the government deals with the problem of home-grown terrorists, such as the ones who attacked the London transport system this summer.
There has been a major outreach programme into the Muslim community since the London bombings, but MPs queried why similar measures were not taken in the months before the attacks, given the evidence that home-grown attacks were a possibility.
Mr Blair said there had been a lot of work on improving security and intelligence and in engaging with the Muslim community, but admitted that inevitably events “entered into a different dimension” when an attack happened.
A report presented to Mr Blair by his own officials last year suggested British foreign policy was a key contributory factor in fostering extremism at home, but he rejected this, as he has done in the past, and said such ideas had to be tackled head on.
“The idea that you can possibly justify killing innocent people on the [London] underground by reference to Iraq or Palestine is absurd, ” he said, adding that this message had to be taken out into the Muslim community by its own leaders.
Critics are concerned that community relations in Britain will not be helped by proposed new terror laws, but today the prime minister insisted measures such as increased powers to detain terror suspects without charge were necessary.
“People say I am casual about civil liberties – not at all. But I do believe that we have to send pretty strong signals to people who might want to come into our country to cause trouble. I want to send a message that life is going to be difficult,” he said.
In the wake of the London bombings on July 7th, Mr Blair said the home secretary would be using his powers to deport foreign nationals considered to be encouraging terrorism more widely, on the basis that he would not accept them staying and causing trouble.
And he repeated this argument today, saying: “If someone comes to this country, we expect them to abide by our rules and behave in a proper way. If they don’t, well then they can get out again.”
Under the Human Rights Act, the government is prohibited from deporting foreign nationals to countries where they may face torture. It has begun signing agreements with destination countries assuring this will not happen as a way of getting around the law.
Such memoranda of understanding have already been agreed with Jordan and Libya, and although human rights groups have expressed scepticism about the validity of these agreements, Mr Blair today said he believed they would be upheld.
“I don’t believe a government with which this government has a friendly relationship would give this undertaking and then breach it,” he said. “The alternative is that these people can remain in this country whatever they do. I find that unacceptable.”
