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For myself, I believe that all those observations are part of any sensible diagnosis. As the first parliamentary Member of my party, as far as I know, to call publicly for an independent inquiry into the Iraq war on 2 June 2003, I am scarcely likely to argue otherwise. However, in my view these observations do not constitute the whole diagnosis. Clearly, there is something missing. Dhiren Barot, for example, cannot originally have been a victim of Islamophobia as he was raised as a Hindu. Jermaine Lindsay, the 7/7 bomber, cannot have been caught in an intergenerational struggle with Pakistani elders as he was black. Mohammed Sidique Khan, another
7/7 bomber, cannot have had his livelihood damaged by lower life chances as he was a graduate of Leeds Metropolitan university.
I suggest to the House that that missing something is the ideology of Islamism. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) said, Islamism is not Islam. Islam is a religion—a great religion at that and one, it seems to me, as various, as complex, as multi-faceted and as capable of supporting a great civilisation as Christianity. Islamism, however, is an ideology forged largely in the past 100 years, and that word “ideology” should help to convey to the House a flavour that is as much modern as mediaeval.
Like communism and like fascism, those other modern ideologies, Islamism divides not on the basis of class or of race, but on the basis of religion. To this politician, it has three significant features. First, it separates the inhabitants of the dar-al-Islam—the house of Islam—and the dar-al-Harb—the house of war—and, according to Islamist ideology, those two houses are necessarily in conflict. Secondly, it proclaims to Muslims that their political loyalty lies not with the country that they live in, but with the umma—that is, the worldwide community of Muslims. Thirdly, it aims to bring the dar-al-Islam under sharia law.
I am not an expert on Islam, but I have learned enough about it since I was first elected to this place in 2001 to recognise that its view, and our inherited view of the difference between the sacred and secular, diverge. In our inherited view, the sacred and the secular are separate. The Christian tradition from which our inherited view springs has always acknowledged a distinction between what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. In Islam, that distinction is harder to perceive.
It is, of course, true that in the Muslim societies in which I have travelled sharia law and secular law exist side by side. In Pakistan, for example, there are both secular and sharia courts. None the less, the distinction is anathema, so to speak, to the Islamists. They look back for inspiration to Mohammed’s original political settlement, in which the religious and political were, in effect, one and the same. They are, as the phrase has it, “dreaming of Medina.” They seek to restore the caliphate to a glory that is tinged with nostalgia and longing.
Let me give a hard example of what that means and its significance in the context of the Queen’s Speech. The Home Secretary was recently and notoriously heckled at a public meeting in Leyton by Abu Izzadeen, another convert to Islam, who was formerly known as Trevor Brooks. He said to the Home Secretary:
“How dare you come to a Muslim area?”
That was not some random insult or interruption; Mr. Izzadeen knew what he was doing. He was asserting that Muslims are in a majority in the part of Leyton in which the Home Secretary was speaking. He was therefore claiming that part of the country as part of the dar-al-Islam. He was saying, in effect, that sharia law, not British law, should run in Leyton. Mr. Izzadeen’s version of sharia law would be consistent with dispensations for Muslims from some aspects of British law, the application of a sharia
criminal code, special taxes for non-Muslims, a public ban on alcohol consumption and the closure of pubs and bars, and a ban on conversions from Islam to other faiths.
We can, of course, choose to dismiss Mr. Izzadeen as an isolated fanatic, but such a view may be unwise. There is polling evidence to suggest that his views tap into a reservoir of sympathy and support. For example, an ICM poll that was commissioned last February found that four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced to parts of this country. It is important to note that that almost certainly represents a degree of support for what I would call soft sharia—in other words, for the application of some sharia law in relation to family arrangements alone. None the less, even the implementation of soft sharia would mark, I think for the first time, one group of British citizens living under a different set of laws from other British citizens.
We must consider what the likely future effect would be on domestic Muslim support for sharia, and even for terror, of a further downward spiral events, of further international tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims, of further domestic terrorist incidents—which, alas, there may be—and of racist and xenophobic backlashes against British Muslims. That is the challenge that we all face together. In my view, it is a challenge to Britain that is no less pressing than the challenge of climate change, which has occupied much of the debate today. That is the challenge for the political and media classes as a whole, and it is especially the challenge for this Government and the security and terror-related aspects of the Queen’s Speech.
There are three tests for those parts of the Queen’s Speech and, in concluding, I will put them as questions. The first question is: does the whole Government machine clearly recognise that Islamism is a key element in poisoning relations between Muslims and non-Muslims? The evidence is ambiguous. The Prime Minister has said, crucially:
“The rules of the game have changed”.
Individual Ministers, such as the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whom I heard speaking on this matter last week, see the scale of the problem. However, as a brilliant pamphlet—Martin Bright’s “When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries”—for the think tank Policy Exchange indicated, the foreign policy, Home Office and security establishments are divided on how to deal with the Islamists. Anyone who doubts that those divisions exist should ponder the leaked memos from Government in relation to the proposed visit by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, with which Mr. Bright illustrates his pamphlet.
The second question for the Government is: can they prove to the House and to the country that the proposals in the Queen’s Speech on security are inspired by the long-term good of the country, rather than by short-term political manoeuvring? That is a crucial question. Ministers must recognise that the yoking together of spin—which my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) mentioned and which I describe as the practices devised originally to deliver new Labour from the failures of the Kinnock
and Foot years—and the selling of the Iraq war has eviscerated trust in the Government.
Alas, the habit of spin continues. The Chancellor now tells us that he wants to get tough on security, but, as I pointed out to the Prime Minister this afternoon, only £476,000 has been seized from suspect sources in six years and only four enforcement actions have been taken against Islamic charities—not that I am criticising Islamic charities as a whole, of course. The Home Secretary—that rival to the Chancellor, we read—will no doubt claim that he will be even tougher, but according to a written answer that I received recently:
“There has been no centrally issued instruction to prison governors on the receipt of Islamist publications by prisoners.”—[ Official Report, 26 October 2006; Vol. 450, c. 2126W.]
That is remarkable. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, for her part, must realise that those who sit on her new Integration and Cohesion Commission are unlikely to be optimistic, given that its predecessor, the huge “Tackling Extremism Together” project, has had only four of its proposals implemented. The Secretary of State for Education and Skills, in the wake of the collapse of his policy on admissions to faith schools, must now ensure that university principals strike the right balance between allowing free speech to flourish on campuses and closing down the incitement of violence, whether by Islamists or by anyone else. The Government as a whole must recognise that their motives in arguing for 90 days’ detention are greeted with deep suspicion, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) pointed out in his characteristically incisive speech earlier today.
The third and final question for the Government is: if they acknowledge the dangers posed by Islamism, and if their analysis is correct, will they see the necessary action through? The aftermath of the recent remarks by the Leader of the House about the niqab—remarks that I suspect were driven by his own concern about shariaisation—revealed deep uncertainty within the Government. Soon after he spoke out, voices were heard suggesting that his remarks had alienated moderates and driven Muslims into the hands of the extremists; that his words could have been better chosen; and that now was not the right time to have a public discussion about Islamism. I am not so sure. There is a deep problem. Politicians’ words can nearly always be better chosen, and now is never the right time, it seems, to have a public discussion about Islamism and integration. Broadly speaking, we have not been having this public discussion since the Rushdie affair, and my main concern about not having an informed, decent, consistent and rigorously thought through public discussion about Islamism centres on the effect that that postponement will have, not only on the non-Muslim majority, but on the Muslim moderates—the moderate and prosperous greater share of Muslims to whom I referred earlier.
The leadership of the Muslim community that I know best, in High Wycombe, is moderate and sensible. The community makes a huge contribution to the town. It is well integrated into both the main political parties and it produced the first Conservative Asian
mayor in the country—Mohammed Razzaq—in the 1980s. However, it is clear that nationally, and especially among the alienated young, the moderates are not making the running; the Islamists are making the running. The moderates are in a position strikingly similar to that of the Social Democratic and Labour party in Northern Ireland, which has, in the past 15 years, been outpaced, outwitted and outsmarted by Sinn Fein-IRA, with consequences that are still fully to be seen. Deferring the debate further will only allow this process to continue. When it finally takes place, which it will, it will probably be noisier and nastier than would otherwise have been the case. It is essential that the moderates grasp that the main threat of the Islamists is as much to them as to anyone else.
This Queen’s Speech thus presents us with a choice—we can either take an approach that tends to lurch from pacification in the wake of future highly charged public rows, such as the veils controversy, to panic in the wake of future terrorist attacks, which we are, alas, told are only too likely to happen, or we can rise to the challenge in an informed, decent and consistent way. In facing the challenge, Opposition Members must acknowledge and be mindful of the fact that Ministers have a responsibility that none of the rest of us at present has to bear.
George Orwell once wrote of the
“deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.”
On 7/7, we heard the roar of bombs in London. I sometimes worry that the deep, deep sleep that Orwell described in the 1930s is still here in relation to Islamism in sections of the Government, parts of the political and media establishment, the House and the country. This is one of the most urgent problems facing us, and if we are in that deep, deep sleep, it is time for all of us to wake up.
Debate adjourned. —[Jonathan Shaw.]
Debate to be resumed tomorrow.
National DNA Database
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Jonathan Shaw.]
9.42 pm
Dr. Ian Gibson (Norwich, North) (Lab): We can tell that the debate is serious because no one is in the Chamber except the Minister and me. That is a good omen that something will happen in the future, which is what I want from the debate.
I want to raise the issue because it is clear that the police and judges in western countries agree that the advent of genetic testing is a revolutionary development, much more so than fingerprinting, which came in at the end of the 19th century. It is impossible now to say that a criminal disappeared without leaving a trace. Even if he or she wore gloves, it would be possible to trace them by using new technology, and I want to explain that point.
Forensic science made that leap forward in 1985 when a British scientist, Alec—now Sir Alec—Jeffreys, of Leicester university, discovered a new way of identifying people within a few hours using the molecule deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short. I say a few hours, but that took days at the time. The technology is developing all the time. Scene of crime identification—picking up the DNA and identifying the individual—can now be done in a matter of minutes. We are taking this seriously. Britain being ahead in anything these days is good news, and encouraging such a situation underlies this debate.
DNA can be obtained from all sorts of sources: minute specks of blood; single hairs; a trace of saliva left on a cigarette butt; a stamp; a glass; a toothbrush; sweat on clothing; and, more importantly, a tiny drop of a rapist’s sperm. Despite the fact that people think that such things are proof, they just identify that an individual has been at the scene of a crime and do not necessarily mean that the individual is guilty of the crime. Being there does not provide the necessary legal identification.
This is what it is all about. I took this from a member of the Cabinet who had touched a glass of orange and put it down. I purloined the glass and took the DNA off it. I went back to a laboratory that I used to work in and identified that individual. I am sure that I could get £1 million—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. May I say to the hon. Gentleman that visual aids are not encouraged in the House? It might be helpful to the Official Report if he described what he is holding.
Dr. Gibson: I am sorry that I have used a visual aid, but I thought that it would help the debate amazingly well.
This is a DNA analysis. I took a small piece of DNA from a glass of orange that somebody held. I broke it up into pieces, and these are those pieces. Each individual has a band pattern—like a bar code in a supermarket, I guess, which identifies a particular object—and this identifies the individual. It tells me so much, but even if The Times offers me £1 million, I will not divulge who the individual is, although it is rather tempting to do so. That is what it is all about. The
DNA analysis goes into the computer and a coding relationship is introduced, which allows us to pick something up, identify DNA and match it to what has gone into the computer.
Such evidence has been used very positively not only in this country, where it has been used a great deal, but in the United States. We have been able to look at prisoners there, some of whom—54 to be exact—were on death row, but were innocent of the rapes of which they had been convicted. When there was an identification of sperm found at the scene of the crime, it did not match that of the individual who had been put away, so DNA, which we might call bar coding, identified the fact that those people were innocent. It is extremely important in being able to do that.
An amendment to the law in this country made in 2001 allowed us to take DNA samples from individuals who had not necessarily been charged and had only been cautioned. That enabled us to do this kind of bar coding and put it on a database. Some 3.4 million individuals—a small fraction of the population, but growing all the time—are on a database, which is accessible to many different people.
Is there a benefit in keeping those people on a database? There is a good answer to that from the Home Office, which is true: 8,251 profiles have been matched to 13,749 offences, and they show that some of those individuals whose records have been kept are guilty of previous offences. That is quite a good record and quite enticing in relation to carrying this out.
I am talking about murderers, attempted murderers, rapists and sex offenders, and those figures relate to the national database in 2005. Such cases are often called cold cases in the press—people look back down the line in terms of taking data to see whether there is an association with crime scene data that are being taken up. This is one of the stories. In 1988, two young girls were raped and sexually abused. In 2001, somebody was picked up for shoplifting and their DNA taken. Blow me, it was seen that the DNA was the same as that picked up in the case involving those young women many years before. There are positive stories about what science, technology and DNA profiling have brought to the crime scene.
The Government have invested millions of pounds in the programme and we have increased the size of the database in the last five years. There is no universal demand for this kind of thing to be compulsory and no insistence that we must have a database of everybody in this country, but the issue at the minute is, should we be doing this for everybody? That is a fair question.
If, because of such disparate successes, there is a call for a database to be introduced, we must consider the other side of the argument, and say what problems might arise. In the Queen’s Speech debate—as you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I always link up with previous debates—ID cards were discussed. We are not talking about introducing a DNA database for ID cards, but one can see that there might be an argument for doing that in a different political climate. There is no insistence on it at the moment, but it could happen. That worries many people. We live in a world in which people are worried about terrorism, and one can see the justification for such a database. We also live in a world in which people appeal to civil liberties and ask why such DNA information should be held on them.
The DNA information can be used not only to locate someone at a crime scene, but for other matters. The DNA bar coding can tell us whether people have type 1 diabetes, for example. This country is also running what is called a biobank—DNA based, again with bar coding—which tells us what genes we have and what we might die of, whether cancer, diabetes or whatever. That worries many people, and I shall deal with why that is so.
Sir Alec Jeffreys, the father of the industry, has said that the biology used involves about 10 different genetic markers. He says that that is okay at the moment, but that we ought to develop 16 markers to be absolutely sure, because, as use of the technology increases, the problem of mismatching could become greater. He told the Select Committee of which I am Chairman that only one bad mismatch would be needed to destroy not only the industry but the whole culture around what the technology can do. He asked us to hold back and not consider putting everybody on a database at this stage.
Another issue is whether we should be allowed to take DNA from people. I did it surreptitiously by taking somebody’s glass. I did not abuse the person, and I have not revealed who he is—as I said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I would never do that. However, one can see how many people could commit abuse by being much more subtle about getting the DNA sample. You will have read about people taking samples from buckets, picking out hairs on documents and so on. That is possible, and dirty tricks can be played. Normally, we do not do that—we take samples of blood, saliva and so on—but one can see how that can be developed, and that worries many people.
The ownership of samples is also an issue. Private companies take such samples and hold them under police jurisdiction, but there is a real risk that others will get their hands on such information. People worry about insurance companies getting DNA profile information, which tells them what diseases or problems a person might have. Who knows what genetics might be able to tell us about the personalities of individuals and so on? Such information could be very interesting to life insurance companies. In the United States, it is estimated that 6 per cent. of employers use genetic tests as part of job selection procedures, to find out what candidates might be afflicted with, and so on. Large databases have developed in the United States through the collection of samples on the basis of finding out who had died in the Vietnamese war, for example. Those contain a lot of information that could be used.
People also worry about the management and oversight of such a database agency. They worry, too, that more black and ethnic community individuals are on the database, and that there is a bias in that regard. People are worried about the way in which samples are taken and the state of the DNA. Questions about the database, its growth and the problem of mismatches to which I referred are raised continually.
Research is showing that DNA can come from different sources. I do not want to get technical, but it can be located in mitochondria—inherited from the mother, for instance. It is possible to discover all sorts of information in that way.
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