Terrorism Bill

The right hon. Gentleman is right, and the provision will prejudice British interests in future. People whom we call terrorists today may be freedom fighters tomorrow and the Government the day after. The measure therefore puts the country in the difficult position of receiving requests that we cannot possibly fulfil in the interests of justice, but with which diplomatic pressure and the immediate national interest will urge us to comply. That puts the Home Secretary in a difficult position for the sake of a definition that is not worth the candle. If terrorist and other organisations are covered by the wide definition of support for terrorist activities in the Terrorism Act 2000, it is right that we should proscribe their activities in this country. However, we do not need the flimsy excuse of glorification to extend those provisions, because the House has shown that it is prepared to act responsibly when presented with information by the Government, even when, for reasons of security and the need to protect the provenance of the information, it cannot be given the full facts. The House has been prepared to take on trust the advice of this very Minister in extending the provisions of the Terrorism Act. That trust may be strained if we accept the provision, as the grounds for proscription would then be that much weaker. That worries me because it is a serious step that the Government are taking in these instances, and we wish to protect the strength of the arguments behind it. For those reasons, we will support the hon. Member for Beaconsfield if he chooses to press his amendment this evening, but I hope the Government will pre-empt that by saying that they will reconsider the clause and do the job that at earlier stages they implied that they might do, and look again at clause 21, which is unnecessarily widened by the provision.