That is pretty much everywhere, and I will give the right hon. Gentleman an example. How about an allegation of assault? Let us suppose the defendant goes out in the high street in Kingston in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency with a baseball bat and starts swinging it around outside the pub, being reckless about whether someone might be struck by it. If he does recklessly strike someone’s jaw and they have a fractured jaw, the defendant can, and will in those circumstances, be convicted of a section 20 offence of grievous bodily harm. So the law does recognise that where there is recklessness, that can be sufficient mens rea for a large number—probably even the majority—of offences against the person. So to that extent all this measure would do is make sure the new legislation chimes with existing legislation.
The second provision I want to deal with has already properly been discussed: to
“update the offence of obtaining information likely to be useful to a terrorist to cover terrorist material that is just viewed or streamed over the internet, rather than downloaded to form a permanent record”.
First, we need to consider what material is being addressed here. It could be digital copies of “Inspire”, an online
publication produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. One edition of that publication contains material giving instructions about how to make a bomb using household materials; these are step-by-step instructions on how to manufacture an improvised explosive device with materials that we could buy in a hardware store and a regular supermarket. That is extremely serious and dangerous material if it gets into the wrong hands. Another example of the kind of material published in these online magazines is instructions on how to wreak the maximum amount of destruction using a vehicle in a crowded area.
To be caught by current provisions, such material has to be downloaded, but that creates a loophole because an individual who chooses to view this pernicious content by simply restreaming it could be outside the net. That would be ridiculous, particularly as every time one of these items is streamed, it will create digital artefacts on the computer. So an individual who downloads it—who has the full digital content on their computer—is liable to be prosecuted, but an individual who keeps streaming it, notwithstanding that that leads to some digital artefacts on their computer, would be outside the net. That would be truly perverse.
So while it is right to say that we should be mindful of the risk of people coming within the ambit of this provision, so long as the defence of reasonable excuse exists, we can be confident that that proper balance is struck.