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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the attacks in Paris naturally dominate the headlines in this morning’s newspapers, joining me now to discuss them are Nabila Ramdani, the French Algerian journalist, the former independent reviewer of terror legislation Lord Carlile and The Economist’s  Anne McElroy.  I just want to talk to you first of all, Lord Carlile, because of course you feature in the Mail on Sunday, you’ve written a column there and you are calling for the snooper’s charter, the Investigatory Powers Bill, to be expedited, to be made law as quickly as possible.  

LORD CARLILE: Yes, I am because this is a subject that has been discussed repeatedly and at great length, the Home Secretary which presented a draft bill which would not become law possibly until 31st December 2016.  My view is that we don’t have time to wait, that what is in the Bill is for the most part perfectly reasonable, it could pass through parliament in the next three to four weeks if the government decided that should happen and I believe that the necessary powers need to be on the statute book as quickly as that.  It could have been London.  

DM: And another point just very quickly, in your article you take issue with the reaction of some of those in the Muslim community, you don’t think that they reacted quickly enough to condemn this.  

LORD CARLILE: I take issue with the lack of reaction.  There was a strong statement from the Muslim Council of Britain but it was not made by its chairman.  I know of many Imams who believe that what has happened is an act of terrible heresy against a great religion but they don’t come out and say so.  I think it’s high time we had much stronger leadership of the Muslim community in the UK, particularly from the religious leaders who should be telling their followers that ISIL believe in a rank heresy and one that now must be defeated.  
Nabila is a very clear example of what I am asking for, she has given a very clear condemnation of what has happened.  She is a leading young Muslim, we need to hear more of that.  Journalists provide leadership, that’s why we’re doing the papers today.
This is a very interesting discussion and as Nabila knows I am with Anne on this but I do think we should focus not on things that have happened in other places but on what has happened now because this is a threat to every country in Western Europe.  
This is not a first, 7/7 was suicide bombers.  We have a much more sophisticated threat now and that’s the main difference.  

DM: We are told a lot about the problems in French society yet France as a country tries to have integration, why doesn’t it happen?  

LORD CARLILE: I think there are two failures in France, one is a failure by attempting social engineering and I agree with Nabila completely, the respect that we have for people’s faiths in this country which should be uncompromising about Britishness as well by the way, works quite well.  The other failure there has been in France and this has been reflected in some of the newspapers, is an apparent failure of French and Belgian intelligence and a failure to use properly particularly communications data.  
That is an oversimplification I’m afraid.  If you look at convicted terrorists in British prisons at the moment, some of them are sociopaths simply and not much more but many of them are very well qualified, they have university degrees, they have been doctors, they have been scientists, they are not vulnerable people but just taking your point, Dermot, of course most criminals want to make financial gain but if the gain is in your mind that you are going straight to heaven, that’s bigger to some people than financial gain and that’s why we have to come back to the religious component of this and point out that they are going to hell.  

DM:  There are clearly security failures but surely the security services can’t always get lucky, surely one will get through.  

LORD CARLILE: There is a very good article by Martin Beckford and Alan Hall in the Mail on Sunday, they point out the intelligence failures.  What we must not forget is that those people who are intelligence officers in this country are also part of our society, they are trying to achieve what is good for our society and characterising them as snoopers, caricaturing them as snoopers is outrageously unfair and destroys a rational debate.  I would give parliament a month to deal with the Investigative Powers Bill, more than enough time but those powers are needed.   This is the end of Schengen.  

DM: Something I’ll be discussing later on but not right now I’m afraid because we are out of time for this paper review, thank you all very much for your thoughts, thank you.