Terrorism Bill

The Government are developing a prodigious talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. They undertake a listening exercise, and agree that something is wrong with their Bill and try to find a way to resolve it. They go almost all the way towards securing the support of Members in all parts of the House, then they ruin it by quite extraordinary drafting. That is very regrettable. I would have hoped that last week’s debate, which was perhaps in rather more high-flown terms than we are mustering this evening, might have persuaded the Government that they had to do the job properly. The result of last’s week’s vote might have indicated that were they not to do it properly, the Bill was highly unlikely to survive in this House or another place without further amendment. I regret that the Minister has come to the House with a rather unacceptable amendment. I want to return to the origins of what the Government are trying to do, with which I have a number of problems. First, I do not understand why the current incitement offences on the statute book are insufficient to deal with the issue, apart from the fact that they are not prosecuted. Many of us find ourselves increasingly impatient because the police and prosecuting authorities do not use the offences already there to deal with the problem. Undoubtedly, incitement offences could have been used on occasions against prominent individuals who would be caught by the prospective legislation. Secondly, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) pointed out, incitement is the correct term in the context of such an offence, rather than encouragement. It worries me that such a mild term is used in a way that is open to all sorts of constructions, which we have yet to learn, as the matter has not been before a court. I also worry because we have still not secured—and I do not think that we will do so this evening—an adequate definition of terrorism and terrorist offences. Potentially, therefore, an offence can be drawn from a much wider field. I do not know whether the Minister intended—or whether she was simply wilfully reckless in the matter—to bring forward an amendment with a self-contradictory internal structure. As the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) ably set out, it applies two conflicting tests—the objective test of recklessness and the subjective test of recklessness—in relation to the same clause. It is recklessness of a high degree to consider what the court has expressly rejected and then to introduce that in new legislation, as though nothing had happened and it had never been considered. That might be part of the Prime Minister’s declared policy, as expressed at Prime Minister’s questions today—that he would prefer to listen to police officers than Law Lords. I am sure that that will endear him to those who will consider this Bill later. Perhaps he believes that Law Lords simply do not understand law in the same way as police officers do. I must, however, counsel Home Officer Ministers that that is not a sensible way of approaching the issue.