Interviews

Bucks Brexit debate

by Mark Rowe

Can anyone get a grip before June 23 on what is accurate? so asked Simon Israel, Home Affairs Correspondent for Channel 4 News, opening a debate on the vote to leave or remain in the European Union (EU), at the House of Commons on Tuesday, May 10.

Pictured left to right are the speakers; front row, Richard Barnes, former Conservative Deputy Mayor of London, Louise Ellman MP (chairman of the evening event), and Simon Israel, Channel 4. Back, Dr Vishwajeet Rana, CEO of Global Banking School, event organiser Richard Bingley, a director of Bucks Business School at High Wycombe-based Buckinghamshire New University, and John Walmsley, solicitor with JKW Law.

Simon Israel covered crime and security affairs and what they meant for and against Brexit. He started with a number; 30,000, the estimated number of ‘foreign fighters’ who have gone to Syria to fight in the civil war there, and Iraq and Libya, in the last three years. “It is I am told the largest mobilisation of foreign fighters since the Spanish Civil War [1936-9],” he told the event, a first seminar by Bucks Business School.

At least 6,000 of those are thought to have come from Europe; at least 750 from the UK; and – although as he admitted such numbers are elusive – at least half of those 750 are thought to have returned to the UK. If Europe is looking at the return of 3000, ‘that is an awful lot of wannabe terrorists to track, in addition to those that are home grown, and lone wolves’, Simon Israel said. “I say all these things to illustrate the need to find, monitor and disrupt ISIS in Europe,” and how co-operation between counter-terror agencies in Europe is more important than ever. He quoted Rob Wainwright the (British) head of the European policing agency Europol, that the UK leaving the EU would ‘serious consequences’ for UK security.

Simon Israel complained that the debate over Brexit was too much in broad terms; too much of the time there was little evidence, or proof, on whatever side. Next, Richard Barnes argued for Brexit, making the case that the UK could still co-operate with neighbours and others, even after leaving the EU, just as the UK police got on with working with police from other countries, no matter what the politics of the countries. The event also heard the legal and financial services sector angles to the EU debate.

Richard Bingley is the author of The Security Consultant’s Handbook, reviewed in the December 2015 print issue of Professional Security magazine.

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