My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lady Ludford, I am moving Amendment 72. It is a short amendment and I shall speak briefly. Clause 31 deals with foreign power threat activity, which is relevant to a constable’s powers of arrest without warrant and detention powers under Clause 35. Indeed, such activity acts as a threshold for the exercise of those powers. Foreign power threat activity also acts as a threshold for the powers of search, disclosure orders, customer information orders and account monitoring orders by virtue of Clauses 21(b), 22 to 24 and Schedules 2 to 5 incorporated in the Bill by those clauses.
Foreign power threat activity is defined in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of Clause 31(1). I am afraid I have to read them:
“In this Part references to foreign power threat activity and to involvement in foreign power threat activity are to one or more of the following … (a) the commission, preparation or instigation of acts or threats within subsection (3)”—
that is, the major offences under the first part of this Bill—
“(b) conduct which facilitates (or is intended to facilitate) conduct falling within paragraph (a)”,
which I have just read. Finally, our amendment is directed to paragraph (c), which we say should be removed from Bill and which refers to
“conduct which gives support or assistance to individuals who are known or believed by the individual concerned to be involved in conduct falling within paragraph (a).”
The reasons paragraph (c) should be removed are twofold. First, it makes no sense. Secondly, even if it did, the conduct described is far too vague and remote from the acts concerned in the offences described to make any sense at all or to make it worth retaining.
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It makes no sense because of the double use of the word “individuals”. The individuals are the receivers of the support or assistance, and they are
“known or believed by the individual concerned to be involved in conduct”.
Well, the individual concerned who is the receiver of the assistance knows perfectly well what conduct he or she is involved in. That nonsense aside—a drafting misstep at best—even if the second use of the word “individual” were to mean the giver of the support or assistance, as it might have done, rather than the receiver of the support or assistance, which makes it a nonsense, we say it is still too remote and vague.
It is too remote because the conduct is so far removed from the support or assistance as to make it effectively impossible to prosecute. It is too vague because there is absolutely no indication of what support or assistance to the relevant individuals is the mischief at which this is aimed. Is it simply supplying a meal or housing, or support or assistance in connection with the conduct? There is nothing effectively to connect the support or assistance to the conduct at which this provision is aimed. This is an important provision because it is the threshold to the exercise of very wide-ranging powers in the clause and the rest of the schedules, so we say it would be far better without paragraph (c). I beg to move.